


*o 




0*0 








"bv* 















<¥ ^ 
















^ ^ 


0* 






°<* 


*0 I. 






V . * 


« o 














V 




0° .'J^> °o 



p 











Ao^ ^ y ^ 










'CpV 











*-o« 







33ooiuji fip SSEtlltam Koficoe C[)aper 



THE DAWN OF ITALIAN INDEPENDENCE: 
Italy from the Congress of Vienna, 1814, to the 
Fall of Venice, 1849. In the series on Conti- 
nental History. With maps. 2 vols, crown 8vo, 
$4.00. 

THRONE- MAKERS. Papers on Bismarck, Na- 
poleon III., Kossuth, Garibaldi, etc. 12010, 
$1.50. 

POEMS, NEW AND OLD. i6mo, $1.00. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

Boston and New York. 



X) 



THRONE-MAKERS 



BY 



/ 



WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 









THE LIBRARY 1 
OF CONGRESS 

WASHINOTOM 



80047 



COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

TWO COPSES fS£C:TiVEQ. 



I A r ^ vm \ 









TO 

DR. MORRIS LONGSTRETH 

IN MEDICINE, OKIGINAL AND WISE 

IN FRIENDSHIP, STEADFAST 



PREFACE 

Since 1789 every European people has been 
busy making a throne, or seat of government and 
authority, from which its ruler might preside. 
These thrones have been of many patterns, to 
correspond to the diversity in tastes of races, 
parties, and times. Often, the business of destroy- 
ing seems to have left no leisure for building. In 
England alone have men learned how to remodel 
a throne without disturbing its occupant; as we 
in America raise or move large houses without in- 
terrupting the daily life of the families who dwell 
in them. 

To portray the personality of some of the con- 
spicuous Throne - Makers of the century is the 
purpose of the following studies. I have wished 
to show just enough of the condition of the coun- 
tries under review to enable the reader to under- 
stand what Bismarck, or Napoleon III, or Kossuth, 
or Garibaldi, achieved. ' I have been brief, and 
yet I trust that this method has afforded scope for 
exhibiting that influence of the individual on the 



vi PREFACE 

multitude which — however our partial science 
may try to belittle it — was never more strikingly 
illustrated than by such careers as these in our 
own time. 

The group of Portraits which follow require 
no special introduction. In the "Tintoret" and 
" Giordano Bruno " I have brought together as 
compactly as possible, for the convenience of Eng- 
lish readers, what little is known about these two 
men. Berti's work on Bruno, from which I have 
drawn largely, deserves a wider recognition than 
it has received outside of Italy ; whoever reads it 
will regret that that eminent scholar was prevented 
from completing his volume on Bruno's philosophy. 
The sketch of Bryant was written in 1894, that of 
Carlyle in 1895, on the occasion of their centen- 
aries. 

My thanks are due to the proprietors of The 

Atlantic Monthly, TJie Forum, and The American 

Review of Reviews for permission to reprint such 

of the following articles as originally appeared in 

those periodicals. 

W. R. T. 

8 Berkeley Street, Cambridge, 
December 8, 1898. 



CONTENTS 

THRONE-MAKERS: page 

Bismarck . 3 

Napoleon III 44 

Kossuth 79 

Garibaldi 115 

PORTRAITS : 

Carlyle 163 

TlNTORET 193 

Giordano Bruno 252 

Bryant 309 



THRONE-MAKERS 



BISMARCK 

One by one the nations of the world come to 
their own, have free play for their faculties, ex- 
press themselves, and eventually pass onward into 
silence. Our age has beheld the elevation of 
Prussia. Well may we ask, " What has been her 
message ? What the path by which she climbed 
into preeminence ? " That she would reach the 
summit, the work of Frederick the Great in the 
last century, and of Stein at the beginning of this, 
portended. It has been Bismarck's mission to 
amplify and complete their task. Through him 
Prussia has come to her own. What, then, does 
she express ? 

The Prussians have excelled even the Eomans 
in the art of turning men into machines. Set a 
Yankee down before a heap of coal and another 
of iron, and he will not rest until he has changed 
them into an implement to save the labor of many 
hands ; the Prussian takes flesh and blood, and 
the will-power latent therein, and converts them 
into a machine. Such soldiers, such government 
clerks, such administrators, have never been manu- 
factured elsewhere. Methodical, punctilious, thor- 



4 THKONE-MAKERS 

ough, are those officers and officials. The govern- 
ment which makes them relies not on sudden 
spurts, but on the cumulative force of habit. It 
substitutes rule for whim ; it suppresses individual 
spontaneity, unless this can be transformed into 
energy for the great machine to use. That Prus- 
sian system takes a turnip-fed peasant, and in a 
few months makes of him a military weapon, the 
length of whose stride is prescribed in centimetres 
— a machine which presents arms to a passing 
lieutenant with as much gravity and precision as 
if the fate of Prussia hinged on that special act. 
It takes the average tradesman's son, puts him 
into the educational mill, and brings him out a 
professor, — equipped even to the spectacles, — 
a nonpareil of knowledge, who fastens on some 
subject, great or small, timely or remote, with the 
dispassionate persistence of a leech; and who, 
after many years, revolutionizes our theory of 
Greek roots, or of microbes, or of religion. Pa- 
tient and noiseless as the earthworm, this scholar 
accomplishes a similarly incalculable work. 

A spirit of obedience, which on its upper side 
passes into deference not always distinguishable 
from servility, and on its lower side is not always 
free from arrogance, lies at the bottom of the 
Prussian nature. Except in India, caste has no- 
where had more power. The Prussian does not 



BISMARCK 5 

chafe at social inequality, but he cannot endure 
social uncertainty ; he must know where he stands, 
if it be only on the bootblack's level. The satis- 
faction he gets from requiring from those below 
him every scrape and nod of deference proper to 
his position more than compensates him for the 
deference he must pay to those above him. Clas- 
sification is carried to the fraction of an inch. 
Everybody, be he privy councilor or chimney- 
sweep, is known by his office. On a hotel register 
you will see such entries as "Frau X, widow of 
a school-inspector," or "Fraulein Y, niece of an 
apothecary." 

This excessive particularization, which amuses 
foreigners, enables the Prussian to lift his hat at 
the height appropriate to the position occupied by 
each person whom he salutes. It naturally devel- 
ops acuteness in detecting social grades, and a 
solicitude to show the proper degree of respect to 
superiors and to expect as much from inferiors, — 
a solicitude which a stranger might mistake for 
servility or arrogance, according as he looked up 
or down. Yet, amid a punctilio so stringent, fine- 
breeding — the true politeness which we associate 
with the word "gentleman" — rarely exists; for 
a gentleman cannot be made by the rank he holds, 
which is external, but only by qualities within 
himself. 



6 THRONE-MAKERS 

Nevertheless, these Prussians — so unsympa- 
thetic and rude compared with their kinsmen in 
the south and along the Khine, not to speak of 
races more amiable still — kept down to our own 
time a strength and tenacity of character that 
intercourse with Western Europeans scarcely 
affected. Frederick the Great tried to graft on 
them the polished arts and the grace of the French : 
he might as well have decorated the granite faces 
of his fortresses with dainty Parisian wall-paper. 
But when he touched the dominant chord of his 
race, — its aptitude for system, — he had a large 
response. The genuine Prussian nature embodied 
itself in the army, in the bureaucracy, in state 
education, through all of which its astonishing 
talent for rules found congenial exercise. One 
dissipation, indeed, the Prussians allowed them- 
selves, earlier in this century, — they reveled in 
Hegelianism. But even here they were true to 
their instinct; for the philosophy of Hegel com- 
mended itself to them because it assumed to re- 
duce the universe to a system, and to pigeon-hole 
God himself. 

We see, then, the elements out of which Prussia 
grew to be a strong state, not yet large in popula-. 
tion, but compact and carefully organized. Let 
us look now at Germany, of which she formed a 
part. 



BISMARCK 7 

We are struck at once by the fact that until 
1871 Germany had no political unity. During 
the centuries when France, England, and Spain 
were being welded into political units by their 
respective dynasties, the great Teutonic race in 
Central Europe escaped the unifying process. 
The Holy Eoman Empire — at best a reminiscence 
— was too weak to prevent the rise of many petty 
princedoms and duchies and of a few large states, 
whose rulers were hereditary, whereas the emperor 
was elective. Thus particularism — what we might 
call states' rights — flourished, to the detriment 
of national union. At the end of the last cen- 
tury, Germany had four hundred independent 
sovereigns : the most powerful being the King of 
Prussia; the weakest, some knight whose realm 
embraced but a few hundred acres, or some free 
city whose jurisdiction was bounded by its walls. 
When Napoleon, the great simplifier, reduced the 
number of little German states, he had no idea of 
encouraging the formation of a strong, coherent 
German Empire. To guard against this, which 
might menace the supremacy of France, he created 
the kingdoms of Bavaria and Westphalia, and set 
up the Confederation of the Khine. After his 
downfall the German Confederation was organ- 
ized, — a weak institution, consisting of thirty-nine 
members, whose common affairs were regulated 



8 THRONE-MAKERS 

by a Diet which sat at Frankfort. Kepresen- 
tation in this Diet was so unequal that Austria 
and Prussia, with forty-two million inhabitants, 
had only one eighth of the votes, while the small 
states, with but twelve million inhabitants, had 
seven eighths. Four tiny principalities, with two 
hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants each, could 
exactly offset Prussia with eight millions. By a 
similar anomaly, Nevada and New York have an 
equal representation in the United States Senate. 

From 1816 to 1848 Austria ruled the Diet. 
Yet Austria was herself an interloper in any com- 
bination of German states, for her German sub- 
jects, through whom she gained admission to the 
Diet, numbered only four millions ; but her pres- 
tige was augmented by the backing of her thirty 
million non -German subjects besides. Prussia 
fretted at this Austrian supremacy, fretted, and 
could not counteract it. Beside the Confedera- 
tion, which so loosely bound the German particu- 
larists together, there was a Customs Union, which, 
though simply commercial, fostered among the 
Germans the idea of common interests. The 
spirit of nationality, potent everywhere, awakened 
also in the Germans a vision of political unity, 
but for the most part those who beheld the vision 
were unpractical; the men of action, the rulers, 
opposed a scheme which enfolded among its possi- 



BISMARCK 9 

bilities the curtailing of their autocracy through 
the adoption of constitutional government. No 
state held more rigidly than Prussia the tenets of 
absolutism. 

Great, therefore, was the general surprise, and 
among Liberals the joy, at the announcement, in 
February, 1847, that the King of Prussia had 
consented to the creation of a Prussian Parlia- 
ment. He granted to it hardly more power than 
would suffice for it to assemble and adjourn ; but 
even this, to the Liberals thirsty for a constitu- 
tion, was as the first premonitory raindrops after 
a long drought. Among the members of this 
Parliament, or Diet, was a tall, slim, blond- 
bearded, massive -headed Brandenburger, thirty- 
two years old, who sat as proxy for a country 
gentleman. A few of his colleagues recognized 
him as Otto von Bismarck; the majority had 
never heard of him. 

Bismarck was born at Schonhausen, Prussia, 
April 1, 1815. His paternal ancestors had been 
soldiers back to the time when they helped to de- 
fend the Brandenburg March against the inroads 
of Slav barbarians. His mother was the daugh- 
ter of an employee in Frederick the Great's War 
Office. Thus, on both sides his roots were struck 
in true Prussian soil. At the age of six he was 
placed in a Berlin boarding-school, of which he 



10 THRONE-MAKERS 

afterward ridiculed the "spurious Spartanism; " 
at twelve he entered a gymnasium, where for five 
years he pursued the usual course of studies, — 
an average scholar, but already noteworthy for 
his fine physique ; at seventeen he went up to the 
University at Gottingen. In the life of a Prus- 
sian, there is but one period between the cradle 
and the grave during which he escapes the re- 
straints of iron-grooved routine : that period com- 
prises the years he spends at the university. There 
a strange license is accorded him. By day he 
swaggers through the streets, leering at the women 
and affronting the men; by night he carouses. 
And from time to time he varies the monotony 
of drinking-bouts by a duel. Such, at least, was 
the life of the university student in Bismarck's 
time. At Gottingen, and subsequently at Berlin, 
he had the reputation of being the greatest beer- 
drinker and the fiercest fighter ; yet he must also 
have studied somewhat, for in due time he received 
his degree in law, and became official reporter in 
one of the Berlin courts. Then he served as re- 
ferendary at Aix-la-Chapelle, and passed a year 
in military service. 

At twenty-four he set about recuperating the 
family fortunes, which had suffered through his 
father's incompetence. He took charge of the 
estates, devoted himself to agriculture, and was 



BISMARCK 11 

known for many miles round as the "mad squire." 
Tales of his revels at his country house, of his 
wild pranks and practical jokes, horrified the 
neighborhood. Yet here, again, his recklessness 
did not preclude good results. He made the lands 
pay, and he tamed into usefulness that restive 
animal, his body, which was to serve as mount for 
his mighty soul. Some biographers, referring to 
his bucolic apprenticeship, have compared him to 
Cromwell; in his youthful roistering he reminds 
us of Mirabeau. 

To the Diet of 1847 the mad squire came, and 
during several sittings he held his peace. At last, 
however, when a Liberal deputy declared that 
Prussia had risen in arms in 1813, in the hope of 
getting a constitution quite as much as of expel- 
ling the French, the blond Brandenburger got leave 
to speak. In a voice which seemed incongruously 
small for his stature, but which carried far and 
produced the effect of being the utterance of an 
inflexible will, he deprecated the assertions just 
made, and declared that the desire to shake off 
foreign tyranny was a sufficient motive for the 
uprising in 1813. These words set the House in 
confusion. Liberal deputies hissed and shouted 
so that Bismarck could not go on; but, nothing 
daunted, he took a newspaper out of his pocket 
and read it, there in the tribune, till order was 



12 THRONE-MAKERS 

restored. Then, having added that whoever 
deemed that motive inadequate held Prussia's 
honor cheap, he strode haughtily to his seat, amid 
renewed jeers and clamor. Such was Bismarck's 
parliamentary baptism of fire. 

Before the session adjourned, the deputies had 
come to know him well. They discovered that 
the mad squire, the blunt "captain of the dikes," 
was doubly redoubtable ; he had strong opinions, 
and utter fearlessness in proclaiming them. 

His political creed was short, — it comprised 
but two clauses: "I believe in the supremacy of 
Prussia, and in absolute monarchy." More royal- 
ist than the King, he opposed every concession 
which might diminish by a hair's breadth the royal 
prerogative. Constitutional government, popular 
representation, whatever Liberals had been strug- 
gling and dying for since 1789, he detested. De- 
mocracy, and especially German democracy, he 
scoffed at. For sixty years reformers had been 
railing at the absurdities of theOldEegime; they 
had denounced the injustice of the privileged 
classes ; they had made odious the tyranny of pa- 
ternalism. Bismarck entered the lists as the 
champion of "divine right," and first proved his 
strength by exposing the defects of democracy. 

Those who believe most firmly in democracy 
acknowledge, nevertheless, that it has many objec- 



BISMARCK 13 

tions, both in theory and in practice. Universal 
suffrage — the abandoning of the state to the 
caprice of millions of voters, among whom the 
proportion of intelligence to ignorance is as 
one to ten — seems a process worthy of Bedlam. 
The ballot-box is hardly more accurate than the 
dice-box, as a test of the fitness of candidates. 
Popular government means party government, and 
parties are dogmatic, overbearing, insincere, and 
corrupt. The men who legislate and administer, 
chosen by this method, avowedly serve their party, 
and not the state; and though, by chance, they 
should be both skilful and honest, they may be 
overturned by a sudden revulsion of the popular 
will. Such a system breeds a class of professional 
politicians, — men who make a business of getting 
into office, and whose only recommendation is their 
proficiency in the art of cajoling voters. A gov- 
ernment should be managed as a great business 
corporation is managed: it has to deal with the 
weightiest problems of finance, and with delicate 
diplomatic questions, for which the trained efforts 
of judicious experts are needed; but instead of 
being intrusted to them, it is given over to politi- 
cians elected by multitudes who cannot even con- 
duct their private business successfully, much less 
entertain large and patriotic views of the common 
welfare. To decide an election by a show of hands 



14 THRONE-MAKERS 

seems not a whit less absurd than to decide it by 
the aggregate weight or the color of the hair of 
the voters. We speak of the will of the majority 
as if it were infallibly right. The vast majority 
of men to-day would vote that the sun revolves 
round the earth: should this belief of a million 
ignoramuses countervail the knowledge of one as- 
tronomer ? Shall knowledge be the test of fitness 
in all concerns except government, the most criti- 
cal, the most far-reaching and responsible of all? 
Majority rule substitutes mere numbers, bulk, and 
quantity for quality. Putting a saddle on Intelli- 
gence, it bids Ignorance mount and ride whither 
it will, — even to the devil. It is the dupe of its 
own folly ; for the politicians whom it chooses turn 
out to be, not the representatives of the people, 
but the attorneys of some mill or mine or railway. 
These and similar objections to democracy Bis- 
marck urged with a sarcasm and directness hitherto 
unknown in German politics. When half the 
world was repeating the words "Liberalism," 
"Constitution," "Equality," — as if the words 
themselves possessed magic to regenerate society, 
— he insisted that firm nations must be based upon 
facts, not phrases. He had the twofold advantage 
of invariably separating the actual from the ap- 
parent, and of being opposed by the most incom- 
petent Liberals in Europe. However noble the 



BISMARCK 15 

ideals of the German reformers, the men them- 
selves were singularly incapable of dealing with 
realities. Nor should this surprise us; for they 
had but recently broken away from the machine 
we have described, and as they had not yet a 
new machine to work in, they whirled to and fro 
in vehement confusion, the very rigidity of their 
previous restraint increasing their dogmatism and 
their discord. 

The revolution of 1848 soon put them to the 
ordeal. The German Liberals aimed at national 
unity under a constitution. Like their brothers 
in Austria and Italy, they enjoyed a temporary 
triumph; but they could not construct. Their 
Parliament became a cave of the winds. Their 
schemes clashed. By the beginning of 1850 the 
old order was restored. 

During this stormy crisis, Bismarck, as deputy 
in two successive Diets, had resolutely withstood 
the popular tide. He regarded the revolutionists 
as men in whom the qualities of knave, fool, and 
maniac alternately ruled ; the revolution itself, he 
said, had no other motive than "a lust of theft." 
One of its leaders he dismissed as a "phrase- 
watering-pot." The right of assemblages he ridi- 
culed as furnishing democracy with bellows; a 
free press he stigmatized as a blood-poisoner. 
When the imperial crown was offered to the King 



16 THRONE-MAKERS 

of Prussia, Bismarck argued against accepting it; 
lie would not see his King degraded to the level 
of a mere "paper president." 

Such opposition would have made the speaker 
conspicuous, if only for its audacity. His enemies 
had learned, however, that it required a strong 
character to support that audacity continuously. 
They tried to silence him with abuse; but their 
abuse, like tar, added fuel to his fire. They tried 
ridicule; but their ridicule had too much of the 
German dulness to wound him. They called him 
a bigoted Junker, or squire. "Remember," he 
retorted, "that the names Whig and Tory were 
first used opprobriously, and be assured that we 
will yet bring the name Junker into respect and 
honor." Many anecdotes are told illustrating his 
quick repulse of intended insult or his disregard of 
formality. He was not unwilling that his enemies 
should remember that he held his superior physical 
strength in reserve, if his arguments failed. Yet 
on a hunting-party, or at a dinner, or in familiar 
conversation, he was the best of companions. Ger- 
many has not produced another, unless it were 
Goethe, so variedly entertaining ; and Goethe had 
no trace of one of Bismarck's characteristics, — 
humor. He possessed also tact and a sort of Ho- 
meric geniality which, coupled with unbending 
tenacity, fitted him to succeed as a diplomatist. 



BISMARCK 17 

In 1851 the King appointed him to represent 
Prussia at the German Diet, which sat at Frank- 
fort. The outlook was gloomy. Prussia had 
quelled the revolution, but she had lost prestige. 
Unable to break asunder the German Confedera- 
tion or to dominate it, she had signed, at Olmutz, 
in the previous autumn, a compact which acknow- 
ledged the supremacy of her old rival, Austria. 
While the humiliation still rankled, Bismarck 
entered upon his career. Hitherto not unfriendly 
to Austria, because he had looked upon her as the 
extinguisher of the revolution, which he hated 
most of all, he began, now that the danger was 
over, to give a free rein to his jealousy of his 
country's hereditary competitor. In the Diet, the 
Austrian representative presided, the rulings were 
always in Austria's favor, the majority of the 
smaller states allowed Austria to guide them. 
Bismarck at once showed his colleagues that 
humility was not his role. Finding that the Aus- 
trian president alone smoked at the sittings, he 
took out his own cigar and lighted it, — a trifle, 
but significant. He resisted every encroachment, 
and demanded the strictest observance of the let- 
ter of the law. Gradually he extended Prussia's 
influence among the confederates. He unmasked 
Austria's insincerity; he showed how honestly 
Prussia walked in the path of legality; until he 



18 THRONE-MAKERS 

slowly created the impression that wickedness was 
to be expected from one, and virtue from the 
other. 

During seven years Bismarck held this outpost, 
winning no outward victory, but storing a vast 
amount of knowledge about all the states of the 
Confederation, their rulers and public men, which 
was subsequently invaluable to him. His dis- 
patches to the Prussian Secretary of State, his 
reports to the King, form a body of diplomatic 
correspondence unmatched in fulness, vigor, di- 
rectness, and insight. With him, there was no 
ambiguity, no diplomatic circumlocution, no Ger- 
man prolixity. He sketched in indelible outlines 
the portraits, corporal or mental, of his colleagues. 
He criticised the policy of Prussia with a brusque- 
ness which must have startled his superior. He 
reviewed at longer range the political tendencies 
of Europe. Officially, he kept strictly within the 
limits of his instructions ; but his own personality 
represented more than he could yet officially de- 
clare, — Prussia's ambition to become the leader 
of Germany. In all his dispatches, and in all 
places where caution did not prescribe silence, he 
reiterated his Cato warning, "Austria must be 
ousted from Germany." 

Do not suppose, however, that Bismarck's po- 
litical greatness was then discerned. Probably, 



BISMARCK 19 

had you inquired of Germans forty years ago, 
"Who among you is the coming statesman?" not 
one would have replied, "Bismarck." At the 
opera, we cannot mistake the hero, because the 
moonlight obligingly follows him over the stage; 
in real life, the hero passes for the most part 
unrecognized, until his appointed hour; but the 
historian's duty is to show how the heroic qual- 
ities were indubitably latent in him long before 
the world perceived them. 

In 1859 Bismarck was appointed ambassador at 
St. Petersburg, where he stayed three years, when 
he was transferred to Paris. This completed his 
apprenticeship, for in September, 1862, he was 
recalled to Berlin to be minister-president. 

His promotion had long been mooted. The new 
King William — a practical, rigid monarch, with 
no Liberal visions, no desire to please everybody 
— had been for eighteen months in conflict with 
his Parliament. He had determined to reorganize 
the Prussian army; the Liberals insisted that, as 
Parliament was expected to vote appropriations, 
it should know how they were spent. William 
at last turned to Bismarck to help him subjugate 
the unruly deputies, and Bismarck, with a true 
vassal's loyalty, declared his readiness to serve 
as "lid to the saucepan." Very soon the Liberals 
began to compare him with Strafford, and the 



20 THRONE-MAKERS 

King with Charles I, but neither of them quailed. 
"Death on the scaffold, under certain circum- 
stances, is as honorable," Bismarck said, "as 
death on the battlefield. I can imagine worse 
modes of death than the axe." Hitherto he had 
strenuously maintained the first article of his 
creed, — "I believe in the supremacy of Prussia; " 
henceforth he upheld with equal vigor the second, 
— "I believe in the autocracy of the King." 

The narrow Constitution limited the King's 
authority, making it coequal with that of the Up- 
per and Lower Chambers, but Bismarck quickly 
taught the deputies that he would not allow "a 
sheet of paper" to intervene between the royal 
will and its fulfilment. Year after year the 
Lower House refused to vote the army budget; 
year after year Bismarck and his master pushed 
forward the military organization, in spite of the 
deputies. Noah was not more unmoved by those 
who came and scoffed at his huge, expensive, 
apparently useless ark than were the Prussian 
minister and his King by their critics, who did not 
see the purpose of the ark the two were building. 
Bismarck merely insisted that the army, on which 
depended the integrity of the nation, could not 
be subjected to the caprice of parties ; it was an 
institution above parties, above politics, he said, 
which the King alone must control. 



BISMARCK 21 

At the same time, the Minister-President ac- 
tively pursued his other project, — the expulsion 
of Austria from Germany. When the King of 
Denmark died, in December, 1863, the succession 
to the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein was dis- 
puted. Bismarck seized the occasion for occupy- 
ing the disputed territory, in partnership with 
Austria. England protested, France muttered, 
but neither cared to risk a war with the allied 
robbers. When it came to dividing the spoils, 
Bismarck, who had recently gauged Austria's 
strength, struck for the lion's share. Austria re- 
sisted. Bismarck then approved himself a master 
of diplomacy. Never was he more clever or more 
unscrupulous, shifting from argument to argu- 
ment, delaying the open rupture till Prussia was 
quite ready, feigning willingness to submit the 
dispute to European arbitration while secretly stip- 
ulating conditions which foredoomed arbitration to 
failure, and invariably giving the impression that 
Austria refused to be conciliated. As the juggler 
lets you see the card he wishes you to see, and no 
other, so Bismarck always kept in full view, amid 
whatever shuffling of the pack, the apparent legal- 
ity of Prussia. In the end he drove Austria to 
desperation. 

In June, 1866, war came, with fury. One 
Prussian army crushed with a single blow the 



22 THRONE-MAKEKS 

German states which had promised to support 
Austria; another marched into Bohemia, and, in 
seven days, confronted the imperial forces at Sa- 
dowa. There was fought a great battle, in which 
the Prussian crown prince repeated the master 
stroke of Bliicher at Waterloo, and then Austria, 
hopelessly beaten, sued for peace. 

Bismarck now showed himself astute in victory. 
Having ousted Austria from Germany, he had no 
wish to wreak a vengeance that she could not for- 
give. Taking none of her provinces, he exacted 
only a small indemnity. "With the German states 
he was equally discriminating: those which had 
been inveterately hostile he annexed to Prussia; 
the others he let off: with a fine. He set up the 
North German Confederation, embracing all the 
states north of the river Main, in place of the old 
German Confederation; and thus Prussia, which 
had now two thirds of the population of Germany, 
was undisputed master. The four South German 
states, Bavaria, Wiirtemberg, Hesse, and Baden, 
signed a secret treaty, by which they gave the 
Prussian King the command of their troops in 
case of war, 

Europe, which had witnessed with astonishment 
these swift proceedings, understood now that a 
great reality had arisen, and that Bismarck was 
its heart. In France, surprise gave way to indig- 



BISMARCK 23 

nation. Were not the French the arbiters of 
Europe? How had it happened that their Em- 
peror had permitted a first-rate power to organize 
without their consent? Napoleon III, who knew 
that his sham empire could last only so long as 
he furnished his restless subjects food for their 
vanity, strove to convince them that he had not 
been outwitted; that he still could dictate terms. 
He demanded a share of Ehineland to offset Prus- 
sia's aggrandizement; Bismarck refused to cede a 
single inch. Napoleon bullied ; Bismarck published 
the secret compact with the South Germans. Na- 
poleon forthwith decided that it was not worth 
while to go to war. 

We have all heard of the sportsman who boasted 
of always catching big strings of fish. But one 
day, after whipping every pool and getting never 
a trout, he was fain, on his way home, to stop at 
the fishmonger's and buy a salt herring for sup- 
per. Not otherwise did Napoleon, who had been 
very forward in announcing that he would take 
land wherever he chose, now stoop to offer to buy 
enough to appease his greedy countrymen. He 
would pay ninety million francs for Luxemburg, 
and the King of Holland, to whom it belonged, 
was willing to sell at that price; but Bismarck 
would consent only to withdraw the Prussian gar- 
rison from the grand duchy, after destroying the 



24 THRONE-MAKERS 

fortifications, and to its conversion into a neu- 
tral state. That was the sum of the satisfaction 
Napoleon and his presumptuous Frenchmen got 
from their first encounter. A few years before, 
Napoleon, who had had frequent interviews with 
Bismarck and liked his joviality, set him down 
as "a not serious man;" whence we infer that the 
Emperor was a dull reader of character. 

Although, by this arrangement, the Luxemburg 
affair blew over, neither France nor Prussia be- 
lieved that their quarrel was settled. Deep in 
the heart of each, instinct whispered that a life- 
and-death struggle was inevitable. Bismarck, 
amid vast labor on the internal organization of 
the kingdom, held Prussia ready for war. He 
would not be the aggressor, but he would decline 
no challenge. 

In July, 1870, France threw down the glove. 
When the Spaniards elected Prince Leopold of 
Hohenzollern to their vacant throne, France de- 
manded that King William should compel Leo- 
pold to resign. William replied that, as he had 
not influenced his kinsman's acceptance, he should 
not interfere. The prince, who was not a Prus- 
sian, withdrew of his own accord. But the French 
Secretary of State, the Due de Gramont, had blus- 
tered too loudly to let the matter end without 
achieving his purpose *of humbling the Prussian 



BISMARCK 25 

King. He therefore telegraphed Benedetti, the 
French Ambassador, to force King William to 
promise that at no future time should Leopold 
be a candidate for the Spanish crown. Benedetti 
delivered his message to William in the public 
garden at Ems; and William, naturally refusing to 
bind himself, announced that further negotiations 
on the subject would be referred to the Foreign 
Minister. 

The following morning Bismarck published a 
dispatch containing a brief report of the inter- 
view; adding, however, that the King "declined 
to receive the French Ambassador again, and had 
him told by the adjutant in attendance that his 
Majesty had nothing further to communicate to the 
Ambassador." This deceitful addition produced 
exactly the effect which Bismarck intended : every 
German, whether Prussian or not, was incensed 
to learn that the representative German King had 
been hectored by the French emissary, and every 
Frenchman was enraged that the Prussian King 
had insulted the envoy of the "grand nation." 
Bismarck, who had feared that another favorable 
moment for war was passing, now exulted, and 
Moltke, who had for years been carrying the fu- 
ture campaign in his head, and whose face grew 
sombre when peace seemed probable, now smiled 
a grim, contented smile. In Paris, the ministers, 



26 THRONE-MAKERS 

the deputies, the newspapers, and the populace 
clamored for war. Apparently, Napoleon alone 
felt a slight hesitation; but he could hesitate no 
longer when the popular demand became over- 
whelming. On July 19 France made a formal 
declaration of war, and the Parisians laid bets 
that their victorious troops would celebrate the 
Fete Napoleon — August 15 — in Berlin. Had 
not their War Minister, Lebceuf, assured them 
that everything was ready, down to the last button 
on the last gaiter of the last soldier? 

We cannot describe here the terrible campaign 
which followed. In numbers, in equipment, in 
discipline, in generalship, in everything but bra- 
very, the French were quickly outmatched. When 
Napoleon groped madly for some friendly hand to 
stay his fall, he found that Bismarck had cut off 
succor from him. The South Germans, whom 
the French had hoped to win over, fought loyally 
under the command of Prussia; Austria, who 
might have been persuaded to strike back at her 
late conqueror, dared not move for fear of Russia, 
whose friendship Bismarck had secured ; and Italy, 
instead of aiding France, lost no time in complet- 
ing her own unification by entering Rome when 
the French garrison was withdrawn. Forsaken 
and outwitted, the French Empire sank without 
even an expiring flash of that tinsel glory which 



BISMARCK 27 

had so long bedizened its corruption. And when 
the French people, lashed to desperation, contin- 
ued the war which the Empire had brought upon 
them, they but suffered a long agony of losses 
before accepting the inevitable defeat. They paid 
the penalty of their former arrogance in every 
coin known to the Vanquished, — in military ruin, 
in an enormous indemnity, in the occupation of 
their land by the victorious Prussians, and in the 
cession of two rich provinces. Nor was that 
enough : they had to submit to a humiliation which, 
to the imagination at least, seems the worst of all, 
— the proclamation of the Prussian King William 
as German Emperor in their palace at Versailles, 
the shrine of French pomp, where two centuries 
before Louis XIV had embodied the ambition, 
the glory, and the pride of France. The German 
cannon bombarding beleaguered Paris paused, 
while the sovereigns of the German states hailed 
William as their Emperor. 

This consummation of German unity was the 
logical outcome of an international war, in which 
all the Germans had been impelled, by mutual 
interests quite as much as by kinship, to join 
forces against an alien foe. Twenty years before, 
Bismarck had opposed German unity, because it 
would then have made Prussia the plaything of 
her confederates; in this later scheme he was the 



28 THRONE-MAKERS 

chief agent, if not the originator, for he knew 
that the primacy of Prussia ran no more risk. 

Let us pause a moment and look back. Only 
a decade earlier, in 1861, when Bismarck became 
minister, Prussia was but a second-rate power, 
Germany was a medley of miscellaneous states, 
Austria still held her traditional supremacy, the 
French Emperor seemed firmly established. Now, 
in 1871, Austria has been humbled, France crushed, 
Napoleon whiffed off into outer darkness, and 
Prussia stands unchallenged at the head of United 
Germany. Many men — the narrow, patient 
King, the taciturn Moltke, the energetic Yon 
Roon — have contributed to this result; but to 
Bismarck rightly belongs the highest credit. Slow 
to prepare and swift to strike, he it was who mea- 
sured the full capacity of that great machine, the 
Prussian army, and let it do its work the moment 
Fortune signaled; he it was who knew that needle 
guns and discipline would overcome in the end the 
long prestige of Austria and the wordy insolence 
of France. Looking back, we are amazed at his 
achievements, — many a step seems audacious ; 
but if we investigate, we find that Bismarck had 
never threatened, never dared, more than his 
strength at the time warranted. The gods love 
men of the positive degree, and reward them by 
converting their words into facts. 



BISMARCK 29 

Of the German Empire thus formed Bismarck 
was Chancellor for twenty years. His foreign 
policy hinged on one necessity, — the isolation of 
France. To that end he made a Triple Alliance, 
in which Russia and Austria were his partners 
first, and afterward Italy took Russia's place. He 
prevented the Franco-Russian coalition, which 
would place Germany between the hammer and 
the anvil. From 1871 to 1890 he was not less 
the arbiter of Europe than the autocrat of Ger- 
many. 

Nevertheless, although in the management of 
home affairs Bismarck usually prevailed, he pre- 
vailed to the detriment of Germany's progress 
in self-government. The Empire, like Prussia 
herself, is based on constitutionalism: what hope 
is there for constitutionalism, when at any moment 
the vote of a majority of the people's representa- 
tives can be nullified by an arbitrary prime min- 
ister? Bismarck carried his measures in one of 
two ways : he either formed a temporary combina- 
tion with mutually discordant parliamentary groups 
and thereby secured a majority vote, or, when 
unable to do this, by threatening to resign he gave 
the Emperor an excuse for vetoing an objection- 
able bill. Despising representative government, 
with its interminable chatter, its red tape, its in- 
discreet meddling, and its whimsical revulsions, 



30 THRONE-MAKERS 

Bismarck never concealed his scorn. If he be- 
lieved a measure to be needed, he went down into 
the parliamentary market-place, and by induce- 
ments, not of money, but of concessions, he won 
over votes. At one time or another, every group 
has voted against him and every group has voted 
for him. When he was fighting the Vatican, 
for instance, he conciliated the Jews; when Jew- 
baiting was his purpose, he promised the Cath- 
olics favor in return for their support. Being 
amenable to the Emperor alone, and not, like the 
British premier, the head of a party, he dwelt 
above the caprice of parties. Men thought, at 
first, to stagger him by charges of inconsistency, 
and quoted his past utterances against his present 
policy. He laughed at them. Consistency, he 
held, is the clog of men who do not advance; 
for himself, he had no hesitation in altering his 
policy as fast as circumstances required. With 
characteristic bluntness, he did not disguise his 
intentions. "I need your support," he would say 
to a hostile group, "and I will stand by your bill 
if you will vote for mine." "Do ut des " was his 
motto; "an honest broker" his self -given nick- 
name. 

Such a government cannot properly be called 
representative ; it dangles between the two incom- 
patibles, constitutionalism and autocracy. Doubt- 



BISMARCK 31 

less Bismarck knew better than the herd of depu- 
ties what would best serve at a given moment 
the interests of Germany; but his methods were 
demoralizing, and so personal that they made no 
provision for the future. His system could not 
be permanent unless in every generation an auto- 
crat as powerful and disinterested as himself should 
arise to wield it; but nature does not repeat her 
Bismarcks and her Crom wells. At the end of his 
career, Germany has still to undergo her appren- 
ticeship in self-government. 

Two important struggles, in which he engaged 
with all his might, call for especial mention. 

The first is the Culturlcampf, or contest with 
the Pope over the appointment of Catholic bishops 
and clergy in Prussia. Bismarck insisted that 
the Pope should submit his nominations to the 
approval of the King; Pius IX maintained that 
in spiritual matters he could be bound by no 
temporal lord. Bismarck passed stern laws; he 
withheld the stipend paid to the Catholic clergy; 
he imprisoned some of them; he broke up the 
parishes of others. It was the mediaeval war of 
investitures over again, and again the Pope won. 
Bismarck discovered that against the intangible 
resistance of Rome his Krupp guns were power- 
less. After fifteen years of ineffectual battling, 
the Chancellor surrendered. 



32 THRONE-MAKERS 

Similar discomfiture came to him from the 
Socialists. When he entered upon his ministerial 
career, they were but a gang of noisy fanatics; 
when he quitted it, they were a great political 
party, holding the balance of power in the Reichs- 
tag, and infecting Germany with their doctrines. 
At first he thought to extirpate them by violence, 
but they throve under persecution; then he pro- 
pitiated them, and even strove to forestall them 
by adopting Socialistic measures in advance of 
their demands. If the next epoch is to witness 
the triumph of Socialism, as some predict, then 
Bismarck will surely merit a place in the Social- 
ists' Saints' Calendar; but if, as some of us hope, 
society revolts from Socialism before experience 
teaches how much insanity underlies this seductive 
theory, then Bismarck will scarcely be praised for 
coquetting with it. For Socialism is but despot- 
ism turned upside down; it would substitute the 
tyranny of an abstraction — the state — for the 
tyranny of a personal autocrat. It rests on the 
fallacy that though in every individual citizen 
there is more or less imperfection, — one dishon- 
est, another untruthful, another unjust, another 
greedy, another licentious, another willing to 
grasp money or power at the expense of his neigh- 
bor, — yet by adding up all these units, so imper- 
fect, so selfish, and calling the sum "the state," 



BISMARCK 33 

you get a perfect and unselfish organism, which 
will manage without flaw or favor the whole busi- 
ness, public, private, and mixed, of mankind. By 
what miracle a coil of links, separately weak, can 
be converted into an unbreakable chain is a secret 
which the prophets of this Utopia have never con- 
descended to reveal. Not more state interference, 
but less, is the warning of history. 

The fact which is significant for us here is that 
Socialism has best thriven in Germany, where, 
through the innate tendency of the Germans to a 
rigid system, the machinery of despotism has been 
most carefully elaborated, and where the interfer- 
ence of the state in the most trivial affairs of life 
has bred in the masses the notion that the state can 
do everything, — even make the poor rich, if they 
can only control the lever of the huge machine. 

Nevertheless, though Bismarck has been worsted 
in his contest with religious and social ideas, his 
grerft achievement remains. He has placed Ger- 
many at the head of Europe, and Prussia at the 
head of Germany. Will the German Empire cre- 
ated by him last? Who can say? The historian 
has no business with prophecy, but he may point 
out the existence in the German Empire to-day of 
conditions that have hitherto menaced the safety 
of nations. The common danger seems the strong- 
est bond of union among the German states. De- 



34 THRONE-MAKEBS 

feat by Kussia on the east or by France on the 
west would mean disaster for the South Germans 
not less than for the Prussians; and this peril is 
formidable enough to cause the Bavarians, for 
instance, to fight side by side with the Prussians. 
But there can be no homogeneous internal gov- 
ernment, no compact nation, so long as twenty or 
more dynasties, coequal in dignity though not in 
power, flourish simultaneously. Historically speak- 
ing, Germany has never passed through that stage 
of development in which one dynasty swallows up 
its rivals, — the experience of England, France, 
and Spain, and even of polyglot Austria. 

Again, Germany embraces three unwilling mem- 
bers, — Alsace-Lorraine, Schleswig, and Prussian 
Poland, — any of which may serve as a provoca- 
tion for war, and must remain a constant source 
of racial antipathy. How grievous such political 
thorns may be, though small in bulk compared to 
the body they worry, England has learned from 
Ireland. 

Finally, if popular government — the ideal of 
our century — is to prevail in Germany, the de- 
spotism extended and solidified by Bismarck will 
be swept away. Possibly, Germany could not have 
been united, could not have humbled Austria and 
crushed France, under a Liberal system ; but will 
the Germans forever submit to the direction of an 



BISMARCK 35 

iron chancellor, or glow with exultation at the 
truculence of a strutting autocrat who flourishes 
his sword and proclaims, "My will is law"? No 
other modern despotism has been so patriotic, 
honest, and successful as that of Bismarck; but 
will the Germans never awake to the truth that 
even the best despotism convicts those who bow to 
it of a certain ignoble servility? Or will they, as 
we have suggested, transform the tyranny of an 
autocrat into the tyranny of Socialism? We will 
not predict, but we can plainly see that Germany, 
whether in her national or in her constitutional 
condition, has reached no stable plane of develop- 
ment. 

And now what shall we conclude as to Bismarck 
himself? The magnitude of his work no man 
can dispute. For centuries Europe awaited the 
unification of Germany, as a necessary step in the 
organic growth of both. Feudalism was the prin- 
ciple which bound Christendom together during 
the Middle Age ; afterward, the dynastic principle 
operated to blend peoples into nations; finally, in 
our time, the principle of nationality has accom- 
plished what neither feudalism nor dynasties could 
accomplish, the attainment of German unity. In 
type, Bismarck belongs with the Charlemagnes, 
the Cromwells, the Napoleons; but, unlike them, 
he wrought to found no kingdom for himself ; from 



36 THRONE-MAKERS 

first to last he was content to be the servant of 
the monarch whom he ruled. As a statesman, he 
possessed in equal mixture the qualities of lion 
and of fox, which Machiavelli long ago declared 
indispensable to a prince. He had no scruples. 
What benefited Prussia and his King was to him 
moral, lawful, desirable ; to them he was inflexibly 
loyal; for them he would suffer popular odium 
or incur personal danger. But whoever opposed 
them was to him an enemy, to be overcome by 
persuasion, craft, or force. We discern in his 
conduct toward enemies no more regard for mo- 
rality than in that of a Mohawk sachem toward 
his Huron foe. He might spare them, but from 
motives of policy; he might persecute them, not 
to gratify a thirst for cruelty, but because he 
deemed persecution the proper instrument in that 
case. His justification would be that it was right 
that Prussia and Germany should hold the first 
rank in Europe. The world, as he saw it, was a 
field in which nations maintained a pitiless strug- 
gle for existence, and the strongest survived; to 
make his nation the strongest was, he conceived, 
his highest duty. An army of puny-bodied saints 
might be beautiful to a pious imagination, but they 
would fare ill in an actual conflict with Pomera- 
nian grenadiers. 

Dynamic, therefore, and not moral, were Bis- 



BISMARCK 37 

marck's ideals and methods. To make every citi- 
zen a soldier, and to make every soldier a most 
effective fighting machine by the scientific appli- 
cation of diet, drill, discipline, and leadership, 
was Prussia's achievement, whereby she prepared 
for Bismarck an irresistible weapon. In this ap- 
plication of science to control with greater exact- 
ness than ever before the movements of large 
masses of men in war, and to regulate their ac- 
tions in peace, consists Prussia's contribution to 
government; in knowing how to use the engine 
thus constructed lies Bismarck's fame. When 
Germans were building air-castles, and, conscious 
of their irresolution, were asking themselves, "Is 
Germany Hamlet?" Bismarck saw both a defi- 
nite goal and the road that led to it. The senti- 
mentalism which has characterized so much of the 
action of our time never diluted his tremendous 
will. He held that by blood and iron empires are 
welded, and that this stern means causes in the 
end less suffering than the indecisive compromises 
of the sentimentalists. Better, he would say, for 
ninety-nine men to be directed by the hundredth 
man who knows than for them to be left a prey 
to their own chaotic, ignorant, and internecine 
passions. Thus he is the latest representative of 
a type which flourished in the age when the mod- 
ern ideal of popular government had not yet risen. 



38 THRONE-MAKERS 

How much of his power was due to his unerring 
perception of the defects in popular government 
as it has thus far been exploited, we have already- 
remarked . 

The Germans have not yet perceived that one, 
perhaps the chief source of his success was his 
un-German characteristics. He would have all 
Germany bound by rigid laws, but he would not 
be bound by them himself. He encouraged his 
countrymen's passion for conventionality and tra- 
dition, but remained the most unconventional of 
men. Whatever might complete the conversion of 
Germany into a vast machine he fostered by every 
art; but he, the engineer who held the throttle, 
was no machine. In a land where everything was 
done by prescription, the spectacle of one man 
doing whatever his will prompted produced an 
effect not easily computed. Such characteristics 
are un-German, we repeat, and Bismarck dis- 
played them at all times and in all places. His 
smoking a cigar in the Frankfort Diet; his oppo- 
sition to democracy, when democracy was the 
fashion; his resistance to the Prussian Landtag; 
his arbitrary methods in the German Parliament, 
— these are but instances, great or small, of his 
un-German nature. And his relations for thirty 
years with the King and Emperor whom he seemed 
to serve show a similar masterfulness. A single 



BISMARCK 39 

anecdote, told by himself, gives the key to that 
service. 

At the battle of Sadowa King William persisted * 
in exposing himself at short range to the enemy's 
fire. Bismarck urged him back, but William was 
obstinate. "If not for yourself, at least for the 
sake of your minister, whom the nation will hold 
responsible, retire," pleaded Bismarck. "Well, 
then, Bismarck, let us ride on a little," the King 
at last replied. But he rode very slowly. Edg- 
ing his horse alongside of the King's mare, Bis- 
marck gave her a stout kick in the haunch. She 
bounded forward, and the King looked round in 
astonishment. "I think he saw what I had done," 
Bismarck added, in telling the story, "but he said 
nothing." 

On Bismarck's private character I find no im- 
puted stain. He did not enrich himself by his 
office, that hideous vice of our time. He did not, 
like both Napoleons, convert his palace into a 
harem; neither did he tolerate nepotism, nor the 
putting of incompetent parasites into responsible 
positions as a reward for party service. That he 
remorselessly crushed his rivals let his obliteration 
of Count von Arnim witness. That he subsidized 
a "reptile press," or employed spies, or hounded 
his assailants, came from his belief that a states- 
man too squeamish to fight fire with fire would 



40 THRONE-MAKERS 

deserve to be burnt. Many orators have excelled 
him in grace, few in effectiveness. Regarding 
public speaking as one of the chief perils of the 
modern state, because it enables demagogues to 
dupe the easily swayed masses, he despised rhetor- 
ical artifice. His own speech was un-German in 
its directness, un-German in its humor, and it 
clove to the heart of a question with the might of 
a battle-axe, — as, indeed, he would have used a 
battle-axe itself to persuade his opponents, five 
hundred years ago. Since Napoleon, no other 
European statesman has coined so many political 
proverbs and apt phrases. His letters to his fam- 
ily are delightfully natural, and reveal a man of 
keen observation, capable of enjoying the whole- 
some pleasures of life, and brimful of common 
sense, which a rich gift of humor keeps from the 
dulness of Philistines and the pedantry of doc- 
trinaires. His intercourse with friends seems to 
have been in a high degree jovial. 

Not least interesting to a biographer are those 
last years of Bismarck's life, between March, 
1890, and his death, on July 30, 1898, which he 
passed in eclipse. To be dismissed by a young 
sovereign who, but for him, might have been 
merely a petty German prince, — to be told that 
he, the master throne-maker, was unnecessary to 
the callow apprentice, — galled the Titan's heart. 



BISMARCK 41 

Eight years he was destined to endure this morti- 
fication; and although his countrymen everywhere 
hailed him as their hero, the fact of dismissal gave 
him no repose. Europe has seen no similar spec- 
tacle since she bound Napoleon, Prometheus-like, 
on St. Helena. But Napoleon, chafing his life 
away there, had at least the satisfaction of reflect- 
ing that it took all Europe, allied with Russia's 
blizzards and Spain's heats, to conquer him. Bis- 
marck, storming in his exile from power, felt now 
scorn, now hate, for the "young fellow" (as he 
called him) who had turned him out. Here, if 
ever, Nemesis showed her work. Bismarck's whole 
energy had been bent for fifty years on fortify- 
ing the autocracy of the Prussian monarchs; and 
now a young autocrat run from this mould bade 
him go — and he went. We may believe that it 
did not solace Bismarck to find that the "young 
fellow" could get on without him; or to see that 
in England Gladstone, six years his elder, led his 
nation till long past eighty; Gladstone, — whom 
he had so often jeered at as an empty rhetorician, 
— England, which he despised as the home of 
representative government. Could it be that con- 
stitutionalism was kinder than despotism to master 
statesmen ? 

A great man we may surely pronounce him, 
long to be the wonder of a world in which great- 



42 THRONE-MAKERS 

ness of any kind is rare. If you ask, "How does 
he stand beside Washington and Lincoln?" it 
must be admitted that his methods would have 
made them blush, but that his patriotism was not 
less enduring than theirs. With the' materials at 
hand he fashioned an empire; it is futile to specu- 
late whether another, by using different tools, 
could have achieved the same result. Bismarck 
knew that though his countrymen might talk elo- 
quently about liberty, they loved to be governed; 
he knew that their genius was mechanical, and he 
triumphed by directing them along the line of 
their genius. He would have failed had he ap- 
pealed to the love of liberty, by appealing to which 
Cavour freed Italy; or to the love of glory, by 
appealing to which Napoleon was able to convert 
half of Europe into a French province. Bismarck 
knew that his Prussians must be roused in a dif- 
ferent way. 

It may be that the empire he created will not 
last; it is certain that it cannot escape modifica- 
tions which will change the aspect he stamped 
upon it ; but we may be sure that, whatever hap- 
pens, the recollection of his Titanic personality 
will remain. He belongs among the giants, among 
the few in whom has been stored for a lifetime 
a stupendous energy, — kinsmen of the whirlwind 
and the volcano, — whose purpose seems to be to 



BISMARCK 43 

amaze us that the limits of the human include 
such as they. At the thought of him, there rises 
the vision of mythic Thor with his hammer, and 
of Odin with his spear; the legend of Zeus, who 
at pleasure held or hurled the thunderbolt, be- 
comes credible. 



NAPOLEON III 

Madame de Stael said of Rienzi and his Ro- 
mans : " They mistook reminiscences for hopes ; " 
of the second French Empire and the third Napo- 
leon we may say : " They staked their hopes on 
reminiscences." 

In our individual lives we realize the power of 
memory, suggestion, association. If we have ever 
yielded to a vice, we have felt, it may be years 
after, how the sight of the old conditions revives 
the old temptation. A glance, a sound, a smell, 
may be enough to conjure up a long series of 
events, whether to grieve or to tempt us, with 
more than their original intensity. So we learn 
that the safest way to escape the enticement is to 
avoid the conditions. Recent psychology has at 
last begun to measure the subtle power of sugges- 
tion. 

But now, suppose that instead of an individual 
a whole nation has had a terrific experience of 
succumbing to temptation, and that a cunning, 
unscrupulous man, aware of the force of associa- 
tion and reminiscence, deliberately applies both to 



NAPOLEON HI 45 

reproduce those conditions in which the nation 
first abandoned itself to excess : the case we have 
supposed is that of France and Louis Napoleon. 
Before the reality of their story the romances of 
hypnotism pale. 

After Sedan it was the fashion to regard Louis 
Napoleon as the only culprit in the gilded shame 
of the Second Empire ; we shall see, however, that 
the great majority of Frenchmen longed for his 
coming, applauded his victories, and by frequent 
vote sanctioned his deeds. A free people keeps 
no worse ruler than it deserves. 

The Napoleonic legend, by which Louis Napo- 
leon rose to power, was not his creation, but that 
of the French : he was simply shrewd, and used 
it. What was this legend ? 

When allied Europe finally crushed the great 
Napoleon at Waterloo, France breathed a sigh of 
relief. Twenty campaigns had left her exhausted : 
she asked only for repose. This the Restoration 
gave her. But the gratification of our transient 
cravings, however strong they may be, cannot long 
satisfy ; and when the French recovered from their 
exhaustion, they felt their permanent cravings 
return. The Bourbons, they soon realized, could 
not appease those dominant Gallic desires. For 
the Bourbons had destroyed even that semblance 
of liberty Napoleon took care to preserve ; they 



46 THRONE-MAKERS 

persecuted democratic ideas ; they brought back 
the old aristocracy, with its mildewed haughtiness ; 
they babbled of divine right, — as if the worship 
of St. Guillotine had not supervened. During 
twenty years France had been the arbitress of 
Europe; now, under the narrow, forceless Bour- 
bons, she was treated like a second-rate power. 
Waterloo had meant not only the destruction of 
Napoleon, from which France derived peace, but 
also humiliation, which galled Frenchmen more 
and more as their normal sensitiveness returned. 

The Bourbons, knowing that they might be tol- 
erated so long as they were not despised, got up 
a military promenade into Spain, to prove that 
France could still meddle in her neighbors' affairs, 
and that the Bourbons were not less mighty men 
of war than the Bonapartes. They captured the 
Trocadero, and restored vile King Ferdinand and 
his twenty-six cooks to the throne of Spain ; and 
they hoped that the one-candle power of fame 
lighted by these exploits would outdazzle the Sun 
of Austerlitz. But no, the dynasty of Bourbon, 
long since headless, proved to be rootless too : one 
evening Charles X played his usual game of whist 
at St. Cloud ; the next, he was posting out of 
France with all the speed and secrecy he could 
command. 

Louis Philippe, who came next, might have been 



NAPOLEON HI 47 

expected to please everybody : Eoyalists, because 
he was himself royal; Republicans, because he 
was Philippe Egalite's son ; constitutionalists, be- 
cause he hated autocratic methods ; shopkeepers 
of all kinds, because he was ' practical.' And in 
truth his administration may be called the Golden 
Age of the bourgeoisie, — the great middle class 
which, in France and elsewhere, was superseding 
the old aristocracy. Napoleon had organized a 
nobility of the sword ; after him came the nobil- 
ity of the purse. Louis Philippe could say that 
under his rule France prospered : her merchants 
grew rich; her factories, her railroads, all the 
organs of commerce, were healthily active. And 
yet she was discontented. The spectacle of her 
Citizen King walking unattended in the streets of 
Paris, his plump thighs encased in democratic 
trousers, his plump and ruddy face wearing a 
complacent smile, his whole air that of the senior 
partner in some old, respectable, and rich firm, — 
even this failed to satisfy Frenchmen. "He in- 
spires no more enthusiasm than a fat grocer," 
was said of him. Frenchmen did not despise 
money-making, but they wanted something more : 
they wanted gloire. 

Let us use the French word, because the Eng- 
lish glory has another meaning. Glory implies 
something essentially noble, — nay, in the Lord's 



48 THRONE-MAKERS 

Prayer it is a quality attributed to God himself : 
but gloire suggests vanity ; it is the food brag- 
garts famish after. The minute-men at Concord 
earned true glory ; but when the United States, lis- 
tening to the seductions of evil politicians, attacked 
and blasted a decrepit power, — fivefold smaller in 
population, twenty - fold weaker in resources, — 
they might find gloire among their booty, but 
glory, never. As prosperity increased, the Gallic 
appetite for gloire increased. Louis Philippe 
made several attempts to allay it, but he dared 
not risk a foreign war, and the failure of his at- 
tempts made him less and less respected. 

And now arose the Napoleonic legend, at first 
no more than a bright exhalation in the evening, 
but gradually taking on the sweep, the definite- 
ness, the fascination, of mirage at noonday. Time 
enough had elapsed to dull or quite blot out the 
recollections of the hardships and strains, the mil- 
lions of soldiers killed and wounded, the taxes, 
the grievous tyranny ; men remembered only the 
victories, the rewards, and the splendor. A new 
generation, unacquainted with the havoc of war, 
had grown up, to listen with fervid envy to the 
reminiscences of some gray-haired veteran, who 
had made the great charge at Wagram or ridden 
behind Ney at Borodino. Those exploits were so 
stupendous as to seem incredible, and yet they 



NAPOLEON III 49 

were vouched for by too many survivors to be 
doubted. Was not Thiers setting forth the mar- 
velous story in nineteen volumes ? Were not 
Beranger and even Victor Hugo singing of the 
departed grandeur? Were not the booksellers' 
shelves loaded with memoirs, lives, historical state- 
ments, polemics? Paris, France, seemed to exist 
merely to be the monument of one man. And 
wherever the young Frenchman traveled — in 
Spain, in Italy, along the Rhine or the Danube, 
to Vienna, or Cairo, or Moscow — he saw the 
footprints of French valor and French audacity, 
reminders that Napoleon had made France the 
mistress of Europe. No Frenchman, were he 
Bourbon or Republican, but felt proud to think 
that his countrymen had humbled Prussia and 
Austria. 

Confronted by such recollections, the France of 
Louis Philippe looked degenerate. It offered no- 
thing to thrill at, to brag over ; it sinned in hav- 
ing — what it could not help — a stupendous past 
just behind it. So the Napoleonic legend grew. 
The body of the great Emperor was brought home 
from St. Helena, to perform more miracles than 
the mummy of a mediaeval saint. Power and 
gloire came to be regarded as the products of a 
Napoleonic regime: to secure them it was only 
necessary to put a Bonapartist on the throne. 



50 THRONE-MAKERS 

Contemporaneous with the expansion of this 
spell, Socialism grew np, and taught that, just as 
the bourgeoisie had overthrown the old privileged 
classes in the French Kevolution, so now the work- 
ing classes must emancipate themselves from the 
tyranny of the bourgeoisie. Political equality 
without industrial equality seemed a mockery. In 
this wise the doctrines of a score of Utopians pene- 
trated society to loosen old bonds and embitter 
class with class. And besides all this, there was 
the usual wrangle of political parties. The tide 
of opposition rose, and on February 24, 1848, 
swept away Louis Philippe and his minister Gui- 
zot. Among the many fortune-seekers whom that 
tide brought to land was Louis Napoleon. 

He was born in Paris, April 20, 1808, his mo- 
ther being Hortense Beauharnais, who had married 
Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland. The younger 
Louis could just remember being petted in the 
Tuileries by the great Emperor : then, like all 
the Bonapartes, he had been packed off into exile. 
His youth was chiefly spent on Lake Constance, 
at Augsburg, and at Thun. In 1831 he had 
joined iihe Carbonari plotters in Italy. The next 
year, through the death of his elder brother and 
of the great Napoleon's son, he became the official 
Pretender to the Bonapartist hopes. People knew 
him only as a visionary, who talked much about 



NAPOLEON III 51 

his " star," and by writings and deeds tried to 
persuade the world that he too, like his uncle, was 
a man of destiny. A few adventurers gathered 
round him, eager to take the one chance in a 
thousand of his success. Accompanied by some 
of these, in 1836, he appeared before the French 
troops at Strasburg, expecting to be acclaimed 
Emperor and to march triumphantly to Paris. 
He did go to Paris, escorted by policemen ; but 
his attempt seemed so foolish that Louis Philippe 
merely paid his passage to America to be rid of 
him. 

The Prince soon returned to Europe and settled 
in London, where he lived the fast life of the 
average nobleman. In 1840 he set out on another 
expedition against France. Carrying a tame eagle 
with him, he landed at Boulogne : but again nei- 
ther the soldiers nor populace welcomed him ; the 
eagle seems to have been a spiritless fowl, likewise 
incapable of arousing enthusiasm ; and the Prince 
shortly after was under imprisonment for life in 
the fortress of Ham. Nearly six years later he 
bribed a jailer, escaped to London, and, like Mi- 
cawber, waited for something to turn up. 

The fall of Louis Philippe gave Prince Louis 
his opportunity. He hurried to Paris, but was 
considerate, or cunning, enough to hold aloof for 
a while from disturbing public affairs. In those 



52 THRONE-MAKERS 

first months of turmoil many aspirants were de- 
stroyed, by their own folly and by mutual collision. 
Discreetly, therefore, he stood aside and watched 
them disappear. 

Of the several factions, the Socialists and Ked 
Republicans first profited by the Revolution. 
They organized that colossal folly, the National 
Workshops, in which 120,000 loafers received 
from the state good wages for pretending to do 
work which, had they done it, would have bene- 
fited no one. When the state, realizing that it 
could not continue this preposterous expense, pro- 
posed to close the workshops, the loafers became 
sullen : when the wages were cut off, they throttled 
Paris. For four days, in June, 1848, they made 
the streets of Paris their battle-ground, and suc- 
cumbed only after 30,000 of their number had 
been killed, wounded, or captured by Cavaignac's 
troops. The terror inspired by those idlers of 
Louis Blanc's workshops was the corner-stone of 
the Second Empire. 

A few weeks later, Louis Napoleon, elected by 
five constituencies, took his seat in the Assembly. 
His uncle's name was still his only political capi- 
tal. His own record — the Strasburg and Bou- 
logne episodes — inspired mirth. In person there 
was nothing commanding about him. An " olive- 
swarthy paroquet" some one called him. "His 



NAPOLEON III 53 

gray eyes," says De Tocqueville, " were dull and 
opaque, like those thick bull's-eyes which light the 
stateroom of a ship, letting the light pass through, 
but out of which we can see nothing." In after 
years " inscrutable " was the word commonly cho- 
sen to describe his cold, unblinking gaze. Reserve 
always characterized his manners ; for even when 
most affable, his intimates felt that he concealed 
something or simulated something. 

In the Assembly he strove for no sudden recog- 
nition; outside, however, he and his emissaries 
busied themselves night and day fanning the em- 
bers of Imperialism ; and when, in December, 
1848, the French people voted for a president, 
Louis Napoleon received 5,434,000 votes, while Ca- 
vaignac, his nearest competitor, had but 1,448,000. 
How had this come about ? Old soldiers and 
peasants composed the great bulk of his support- 
ers, every one of them glad to vote for " the 
nephew of the Emperor." Next, Socialists, blue 
blouses and others, voted for him because they 
hated Cavaignac for repressing Red Republican- 
ism in June ; and Monarchists of both stripes, 
believing that he would be an easy tool for their 
plots, preferred him to the unyielding Cavaignac. 
Mediocrity and other negative qualities thus 
availed to transform Louis the Ridiculed into the 
first President of the Republic. " We made two 



54 THRONE-MAKERS 

blunders in the case of Louis Napoleon," said 
Thiers ; " first in deeming him a fool, and next in 
deeming him a genius." Louis Napoleon knew 
not only how to profit by both of these blunders, 
but also how to superinduce either belief in the 
French mind. 

Having sworn to uphold the Republic, he began 
his administration. During several months he let 
no sign of his ambition flutter into view, but 
seemed wholly bent on discharging the duties of 
president. In the spring of 1849, however, he 
put forth a feeler by engineering the expedition 
against the Roman Republic. Honest French- 
men protested, but a majority in the Assembly 
supported him; and presently the instinct to be 
revenged on the Romans for defending them- 
selves, and thereby inflicting losses on the French, 
silenced many who had disapproved of the expe- 
dition at the outset. Only the Radicals forcibly 
resisted, but their revolt was quickly put down. 
Louis Napoleon gained the prestige of having 
successfully reasserted French influence in Italy, 
where, for a generation, it had been supplanted 
by the influence of Austria. Furthermore, by be- 
coming guardian of the Pope, he propitiated the 
Clericals, who might some time be useful. That 
he also roused the wrath of the Red Republicans 
did not spoil his prospects. 



NAPOLEON III 55 

One year, two years passed. Faction discred- 
ited faction. Every one looked on the Republic as 
but a preparation for either Anarchy or t"he Em- 
pire. The Reds, irreconcilable and ferocious, 
terrorized the imagination of every one else. No 
doubt the majority of honest Frenchmen — if by 
honest we mean the really intelligent and patriotic 
minority — wished a republic, but those Red Ex- 
tremists had made all Republicans indiscriminately 
odious ; and as the Royalist plotters showed neither 
courage nor ability, the great multitude of French- 
men came to regard the Empire or Anarchy as 
their only alternatives. Most of them, having 
nothing to gain through disorder, leaned to the 
side which promised to leash the bloodhounds of 
murder and pillage. Spasm after spasm of terror 
swept over Paris, and when Paris shudders in the 
evening the rest of France shudders by daybreak. 
Anything to prevent the triumph of the Reds — 
with their guillotine and their abolition of private 
ownership of property — became the ruling in- 
stinct of all other Frenchmen. 

Louis Napoleon, we may be sure, took care to 
encourage the belief that he alone could save 
France from the abyss. In addition to his recog- 
nized newspaper organs, he employed a literary 
bureau to spread broadcast his portrait, his bio- 
graphy, and even songs with an Imperialist re- 



56 THRONE-MAKERS 

frain. He knew the political persuasiveness of 
cigars and sausages distributed among the troops, 
and of wine dispensed to their officers. He was 
by turns modest — declaring that his sole purpose 
was to obey the Constitution — and bold, announ- 
cing that he would not shrink from making France 
strong and prosperous, whenever Frenchmen in- 
trusted that task to him. In his capacity for 
waiting, he gave the best proof of his ability ; and 
we must add that the Assembly, by its folly, gave 
him indispensable aid. 

The Assembly, for instance, restricted the suf- 
frage, in the hope that, by preventing workmen 
from voting, the victory of the Reds might be 
staved off. Again, the Constitution declared 
that no president was eligible for reelection until 
he had been four years out of office. As the 
time for thinking of Louis Napoleon's successor 
approached, the moderates of all parties urged 
that the Constitution be amended, so that he 
might be quietly reelected, — there being no other 
candidate who promised to preserve order. But 
the factious deputies, by a narrow vote, rejected 
the amendment. 

Napoleon now saw his chance, and openly as- 
sailed the Assembly. He posed as the champion 
of universal suffrage, the true representative of 
the people misrepresented by the factious depu- 



NAPOLEON III 57 

ties. They proposed to subject France to the 
uncertainties of a political campaign : his continu- 
ation in office would mean the certain maintenance 
of order. But Napoleon did not rely on demagogy 
alone : in secret he plotted a coup d'etat. 

The trade of house or bank burglar long ago 
fell into disrepute: not so that of the state bur- 
glar, who, if he succeed, may wear ermine jauntily, 
— for ermine, like charity, covers a multitude of 
sins. Louis Napoleon, ready to risk everything, 
laid his plans for stealing the government of 
France. The venture was less difficult than it 
seems, for if he could win over four or five men 
the odds would be with him. He must have the 
Prefect of Paris, the Commandant of the Garrison, 
the Ministers of War and of the Interior : others 
might make assurance double sure, but these were 
absolutely necessary. 

Early in the spring of 1851 he set to work. 
Chief among his accomplices was his half brother, 
Moray, — a facile, audacious man, whose reputa- 
tion, if he had ever had any, would have been lost 
long since in stock-swindling schemes ; after him, 
in importance, came Persigny, an adventurer who 
had fastened on Louis Napoleon fifteen years 
before ; Fleury, a major most active and efficient, 
without qualm, for he foresaw a marshal's baton ; 
and Maupas, one of tnose easy villains who, never 



58 THRONE-MAKERS 

having been suspected of honesty, are spared the 
fatigue of pretending to be better than they are. 
If we assume that all these gentlemen were Im- 
perialists for revenue only, we shall do them no 
injustice. 

Their first move was to send Fleury to Algiers 
to secure a general to act as minister of war. 
He had not to search long; for Saint Arnaud, 
one of the Algerian officers, guessing Fleury's 
purpose, offered his services forthwith. But 
Saint Arnaud stood only fifty-third in the line of 
promotion among French generals; some excuse 
must be found for passing by his fifty-two seniors. 
In a few weeks the French press and official 
gazette announced an outbreak of great violence 
among the Kabyles in Algeria; a little later 
they reported that the insurrection had been sub- 
dued by the energy of General Saint Arnaud; 
then, another proper interval elapsing, Saint Ar- 
naud had come to Paris as minister of war. 

It took less trouble to dismiss the Prefect of 
the Seine, and to substitute Maupas for him. 
Magnan, who commanded the troops, had already 
been corrupted. Half-brother Morny, at the criti- 
cal moment, would appear in the Ministry of the 
Interior. The National Guard and the Public 
Printer could both be counted on, — the latter 
required for the prompt issuing of manifestoes. 



NAPOLEON HI 59 

Everything being ready, the President, after some 
brief delays, set December 2 — the anniversary 
of Austerlitz, and of the coronation of the great 
Napoleon — for committing the crime. 

On the evening of December 1, he held his 
weekly reception at the Elysee ; moved with his 
habitual courtesy among the guests; seemed less 
stiff than usual, — as if relieved of a burden ; then 
went to his study for a last conference with his 
fellow - conspirators. The next morning Paris 
learned that two hundred leading citizens, mili- 
tary and political, including many deputies, had 
been arrested and taken to Vincennes. Placards 
declared that the President, having had news of a 
plot against the state, had stolen a march on the 
plotters, dissolved the Assembly, proclaimed uni- 
versal suffrage, and called for a plebiscite to accept 
or reject the constitution he would frame. At 
first, the stupefied Parisians knew not what to do. 
Then the deputies who had escaped arrest met 
and voted to depose the President ; but his gen- 
darmes quickly broke up the meeting, and lodged 
the deputies in prison. Thanks to the system of 
centralization which France had long boasted of, 
Morny, from the Ministry of the Interior, con- 
trolled every prefect in France by telegraph. 
The provinces were informed that Paris had ac- 



60 THRONE-MAKERS 

cepted the coup d'etat almost before Paris had 
collected lier dazed senses on the morning of the 
2d of December. 

The chief politicians and other leaders being 
caged, there was no one left, except among the 
workingmen, to direct a resistance. They did re- 
volt, and Napoleon and Saint Arnaud gave them 
free play to raise barricades, to arm and gather. 
Then the eighty thousand soldiers in Paris sur- 
rounded them, stormed their barricades, and made 
no prisoners. Acompanying this suppression of 
the mob was the bloodthirsty massacre of a multi- 
tude of defenseless men, women, and children who 
had collected on the boulevards to see the troops 
move against the barricaders. They were shot 
down in cold blood, the soldiers (according to 
general report) having been rendered ferocious 
by drink. Thus was achieved the crime of the 
coup d'etat. 

By this crime Napoleon had demonstrated that 
he had the necessary force to put down the law- 
less, and that he did not hesitate to use it; by 
massacring the innocent throng, he made the army 
his accomplices, against any risk of their fra- 
ternizing with the populace. A fortnight later, 
7,439,000 Frenchmen ratified his crime and elected 
him president for ten years : only 646,000 voted 
against him. Napoleon the Great, by the coup 



NAPOLEON m 61 

d'etat of the 18th Brumaire, had suppressed the 
Directory ; his imitative nephew could now point 
to an equally successful 2d of December. 

France acquiesced all the more readily because 
she was put under martial law. One hundred 
thousand suspects were arrested, and more than 
ten thousand were deported to Cayenne and Al- 
geria. Police inquisitions, military commissions, 
and the other usual devices of tyranny quickly 
smothered resistance. Under the pretense of sup- 
pressing anarchy, — an anarchist meaning any one 
who did not submit to Louis Napoleon, — persecu- 
tion supplanted law and justice. Had you asked 
to see most of the Frenchmen whose names were 
the most widely known, you would have been told 
that they were in exile. 

Like his uncle, Louis Napoleon waited a little 
before putting on the purple. Only on December 
2, 1852, the anniversary of his crime, did he have 
himself proclaimed emperor. The mockery of a 
plebiscite had preceded, and he had assured France 
and Europe that the " Empire means peace." 

Having reached the throne, he made the follow- 
ing arrangements for staying on it. He organized 
a Senate and a Council of State, whose members 
he appointed. The public were allowed to elect 
members to the Corps Legislatif , or Legislature ; 
but as his minions controlled the polls, only such 



62 THRONE-MAKERS 

candidates as lie preferred were likely to be chosen. 
He suffered a few opponents to be elected, in order 
to have it appear that he encouraged discussion. 
Otherwise, he scarcely took pains to varnish his 
autocracy. As a deft Chinese carver incloses a 
tiny figure in a nest of ivory boxes, so did Bona- 
parte imprison the simulacrum of Liberty in the 
innermost compartment of the political cage in 
which he held France captive. 

What must the condition of the French people 
have been that they submitted ! How much ante- 
cedent incapacity for government, how much cher- 
ishing of unworthy ideals, were implied by the 
success of such an adventurer ! And what could 
patriotism mean, when the French fatherland 
meant the land of Louis Napoleon, Moray, Mau- 
pas, Persigny, and their unspeakable underlings? 
The new Empire gave France what is called a 
strong government, by which commercially she 
throve. Tradesmen, seeing business improve and 
their hoards grow, chafed less at the loss of polit- 
ical freedom. The working classes were propi- 
tiated by public works — the favorite nostrum of 
socialists and tyrants — organized on a vast scale. 
Pensions were showered on old soldiers, or their 
widows. Taxes ran high; the public debt had 
constantly to be increased : but an air of opulence 
pervaded France. 



NAPOLEON III 63 

Established at home, Napoleon now looked 
abroad for gloire. Before his elevation, some one 
had warned him that he would find the French 
a very hard people to govern. " Not at all," he 
replied ; " all that they need is a war every four 
years." Europe had formally recognized him, — 
no country being more ready than England to 
condone his great crime. Queen Victoria, the 
typical British matron, exchanging visits with the 
Imperial adventurer made an edifying specta- 
cle ! Presently the land-greed of England and 
the gloire-\h\vst of France brought the sons of 
the Britons who had whipped the great Napoleon 
at Waterloo into an alliance with the sons of the 
Frenchmen who had there been whipped ; and in 
the summer of 1854 British and French fleets 
swept through the Bosphorus and across the Black 
Sea, and landed two armies near Sebastopol. 
Of the Crimean war which ensued, we need say 
no more than that it was immoral in conception, 
blundering in execution, and ineffectual in results. 
Nevertheless, it supplied Napoleon III with just 
what he had sought. He extracted from it large 
quantities of gloire. Marshal's batons and mili- 
tary promotions, the parade of returning troops, 
the assembling at Paris of the European envoys 
who were to agree on a treaty of peace, — what 
did all this show but that Europe had accepted 



64 THRONE-MAKERS 

Napoleon III at Lis own valuation ? In Eussia's 
wilderness of snow the great Napoleon had been 
ruined ; now his nephew posed as the humbler of 
Russia. The great Napoleon had been finally 
crushed by England : now his nephew had enticed 
good, pious England into an alliance, and thereby 
he had surely avenged his uncle. The last Euro- 
pean compact, humiliating to France, had been 
signed at Vienna : the new compact, signed at 
Paris, bore witness to the supremacy of France. 

That year 1856 marks the acme of Napoleon the 
Third's career. It saw him the recognized arbiter 
of Europe. The world, which worships success, 
forgot that the suave, impassive master of the 
Tuileries had been Louis the Ridiculed, a political 
vagabond and hapless pretender, only ten years 
before. Now, as arbiter, he would meddle when 
he chose, and the world should not gainsay him. 
Moreover, he believed his power so secure that he 
was willing to forgive those whom he had injured. 
He had gained what he wanted: why, therefore, 
should they reject his amnesty ? 

Unscrupulously selfish till he had attained his 
ends, Napoleon III had, nevertheless, curious 
streaks of disinterestedness in his nature. What 
but Quixotism impelled him to promise to free 
Italy from her bondage to Austria? He might 
add thereby to his personal renown, but the French 



NAPOLEON HI 65 

people, who must pay the bills and furnish the 
soldiers, were offered no adequate compensation. 
Whatever his motives, he crossed the Alps in 
the spring of 1859, joined the Piedmontese, and 
defeated the Austrians in two great battles. But 
after Solferino he paused, grew anxious, and 
drew back. Many reasons were hinted at: he 
had been horrified at the sight of twelve thousand 
corpses festering in the midsummer heat on the 
battlefield ; he perceived that the campaign must 
last many months before the Austrians could be 
dislodged from the Quadrilateral ; he dreaded to 
create in Italy a kingdom strong enough to be a 
menace to France ; he was worried at the mobiliza- 
tion of the Prussian army, foreboding a war on the 
Rhine. Motives are usually composite : perhaps, 
therefore, all these, and others, made him resolve 
to quit Italy with his mission only half achieved. 
But of all his schemes, that Italian expedition has 
alone escaped the condemnation of posterity. 

Possessing a great talent for scenic display, 
Napoleon dressed his victories so as to get the 
fullest spectacular effect from them. He could 
pose now as the conqueror of Austria, and offset 
the gloire of his uncle's Marengo with that of his 
own Magenta. He had more batons and duke- 
doms to bestow, — more trophies to deposit in the 
Invalides. The gazettes, the official historians, the 



66 THRONE-MAKERS 

court writers, the spell-bound populace, acclaimed 
the new triumphs. Europe became too small for 
Imperial France to swagger in. Napoleon the 
First had meddled in Egypt, and Palestine, and 
the West Indies ; his nephew must do likewise, 
and seek new worlds to conquer over sea. 

Already, however, sober observers noted other 
symptoms, and soon the list of Imperial reverses 
grew ominously long. Early in 1860, Central 
Italy became a part of Victor Emanuel's kingdom : 
Napoleon had insisted that it should form a new 
state for his cousin Plon-Plon. That autumn, 
Sicily and Naples united themselves to Italy : Na- 
poleon had wished and schemed otherwise. That 
same year, too, England compelled him to re- 
nounce his protectorate over Syria. Then he 
planned a French empire in Mexico ; sent French 
troops over under Bazaine; set up Maximilian, 
who appeared to have grafted Napoleonism on our 
continent. But in 1867 he recalled his army, — 
"spontaneously" as he said. The world smiled 
when it reflected that the spontaneity of his with- 
drawal had been superinduced by a curt message 
from the United States and the massing of United 
States troops on the Eio Grande. In 1864 he 
would have kept Prussia and Austria from rob- 
bing Denmark ; but as he had only words to risk, 
they heeded him not. In 1866, when Prussia 



NAPOLEON III 67 

and Austria went to war, expecting that Austria 
would be the victor, he had arranged to take a 
slice of Ehineland while Austria took Silesia. 
But Prussia was victorious, and so quickly that 
Napoleon could not save his reputation even as 
mediator. 

At last Europe realized that his nod was not 
omnipotent, — that Prussia, his enemy, could raise 
herself to a power of the first rank, not only with- 
out but against his sanction. Napoleon also real- 
ized that his prestige was tottering. He must have 
some compensation for Prussia's aggrandizement. 
But when he asked for a strip of Rhineland, Bis- 
marck replied : " I will never cede an inch of Ger- 
man soil." Napoleon, not ready for war, cast about 
for some other screen to his humiliation ; for even 
in his legislature men now dared to taunt him with 
allowing Germany to grow perilously strong. To 
this taunt one of the Imperial spokesmen retorted, 
" Germany is divided into three fragments, which 
will never come together." A day or two later 
Bismarck published the secret treaties by which 
North and South Germany had bound themselves 
to support each other in case of attack. 

Thus thwarted, Napoleon schemed to buy the 
tiny grandduchy of Luxemburg, which had long 
been garrisoned by Prussian troops. The King of 
Holland, who owned it, agreed to sell it for ninety 



68 THRONE-MAKERS 

million francs. Europe was willing, but Bismarck 
said no. He would consent to withdraw his troops, 
to destroy the fortifications, and to convert Luxem- 
burg into a neutral state ; more than that he would 
not allow. And with that Napoleon had to con- 
tent himself, and to persuade the French — as best 
he could — that he had frightened the Prussians 
out of the grandduchy. 

In 1863 Bismarck said to a friend: "From a 
distance, the French Empire seems to be some- 
thing ; near by, it is nothing." About the same 
time Napoleon, who had had much friendly inter- 
course with the Prussian statesman, said : " M. de 
Bismarck is not a serious man." 

Just as the Luxemburg affair was concluded, all 
the world went to Paris to attend the Exposition, 
which was intended to be, and seemed, a symbol of 
the permanence of the Second Empire. The pro- 
jectors knew that the immense preparations would 
enable the government to employ many workmen, 
who might otherwise be unruly, and that the vast 
concourse of visitors would bring money to the 
tradespeople and keep them from grumbling. The 
ostensible purpose, however, was to dazzle both 
Frenchmen and strangers by a view of Imperial 
magnificence ; and it was fully achieved. 

Paris herself, the Phryne among cities, aston- 
ished those who had never seen her, or who had 



NAPOLEON III 69 

seen her in old days. "Where, they asked, were 
the narrow, crooked streets, in which barricaders 
once fortified themselves ? Were these boulevards, 
stretching broad and straight, — were these they ? 
And by what magic had the old, irregular dwell- 
ings been transformed into miles of tall, stately 
blocks? New churches, new quays, new parks, 
new palaces, bearing the impress of grace, sym- 
metry, and a unifying planner, excited the wonder 
of the cosmopolitan throng of visitors. But the 
products of industry, the triumphs of the arts of 
peace, were not allowed to obscure the military 
glories of the Second Empire. A " Bridge of the 
Alma " and a " Boulevard of Sebastopol " kept 
the Crimean prowess in memory; a "Solferino 
Bridge " and a " Magenta Boulevard " bore wit- 
ness to the Italian triumphs. And there were 
pageants, military, courtly, artistic ; balls, at which, 
among the picked beauties of the world, the Em- 
press Eugenie shone most beautiful ; banquets, at 
which Napoleon sat at the head of the table, with 
monarchs at his right hand and his left deferen- 
tially listening. Little did the on-lookers suppose 
that the master of those magnificent revels had 
been lately frustrated by M. de Bismarck, who was 
merely one of the million whose presence in Paris 
seemed a tribute to Napoleon's supremacy. 

History, it is said, never repeats: but is the 



70 THRONE-MAKERS 

saying true ? Is there not an old, old story of 
Belshazzar and the magnificent feast he gave in 
ancient Babylon, and the mysterious writing on 
the wall ? And was not another Belshazzar repeat- 
ing the episode in this modern Babylon less than 
thirty years ago ? However that may be, the Ex- 
hibition of 1867 was the last triumph of Imperial 
France. 

Imperialism had made a great show, reprodu- 
cing, so far as it could, the glamour of the First 
Empire. Judge how potent that First Empire 
must have been, when mere imitation of it could 
thus hypnotize France and delude Europe ! But 
Imperialism, generated by a crime and vitalized by 
corruption and deceit, was not all France. Hon- 
est France, excluded in the beginning, could not, 
would not, be lured in later. Napoleon would have 
conciliated, but the men whom he needed to con- 
ciliate would not even parley. To offset Victor 
Hugo and patriots of his rigid defiance, the Em- 
peror had the outward acquiescence of Prosper 
Merimee, the worldly courtier ; of Alfred de Mus- 
set, the weak-willed, debauched poet ; and of such 
as they. But he had the conscience of France 
against him ; to offset that he leagued himself 
with Jesuits and Clericals. Having exhausted 
the expedients of force, he had tried the arts of 
flattery ; he had intimidated, he had blandished ; 



NAPOLEON HI 71 

he had made vice easy and attractive, in order that, 
though he could not win over the stubborn to his 
cause, their character might be softened through 
voluptuousness. Whosoever could be corrupted — 
let us give him full credit — he did corrupt in 
masterful fashion; but conscience, in France as 
elsewhere, is incorruptible. 

Despite his complicated machinery for gagging 
conscience, protests began to be made boldly. One 
such protest, uttered towards the end of 1868, rang 
throughout France ; and well it might, so auda- 
cious was the eloquence of the protester. Several 
newspapers had opened a subscription for a monu- 
ment to Baudin, a Republican killed in the coup 
d'etat. The proprietors of these newspapers were 
arrested. One of them, Delescluze, had for his 
advocate Leon Gambetta, a vehement young law- 
yer from the South. Before the judge, and the 
prosecuting attorneys, and the police — all myrmi- 
dons of the Emperor — he arraigned the Empire, 
closing with these words : " Here for seventeen 
years you have been absolute masters — ' masters 
at discretion,' it is your phrase — of France. Well, 
you have never dared to say, 'We will celebrate 
— we will include among the solemn festivals of 
France — the Second of December as a national 
anniversary ! And yet all the governments which 
have succeeded each other in the land have hon- 



72 THRONE-MAKERS 

ored the day of their birth ; there are but two 
anniversaries — the 18th Brumaire and the 2d 
of December — which have never been put among 
the solemnities of origin, because you know that, 
if you dared to put these, the universal conscience 
would disavow them ! " Gambetta's invective did 
not save his client from prison, but his arraign- 
ment of the Empire echoed throughout France. 

And all the next year, 1869, though Imperialism 
abated in language none of its pretensions, it 
showed in deeds many signs of nervousness. No 
longer did it think it prudent, for instance, to abet 
the enormous extravagances of Hausmann, the re- 
modeler of Paris. It even talked Liberalism, and 
set up a seeming Liberal Cabinet, with Ollivier at 
its head. " All the reform you may give us, we 
accept," said Gambetta bluntly ; " and we may 
possibly force you to yield more than you intend ; 
but all you give, and all we take, we shall simply 
use as a bridge to carry us over to another form 
of government." Evidently the conscience of 
France, expressing itself through the Republican 
spokesman, could not be placated or seduced. 

A still blacker omen ushered in 1870. Pierre 
Bonaparte, the Emperor's cousin, shot in cold blood 
a journalist, Victor Noir. Two hundred thousand 
persons followed the victim's hearse ; two hundred 
thousand voices shouted through the streets of 



NAPOLEON in 73 

Paris, " Vengeance ! Down with the Empire ! 
Long live the Republic ! " In April the ministers 
proposed further reforms, and called for another 
plebiscite, that worn-out Napoleonic device for de- 
ceiving public opinion. Seven and a third million 
votes were dutifully registered for the Empire, 
and only a million and a half against it ; but 
the Imperialists did not exult, — a majority of 
voters in Paris, and forty-six thousand soldiers, 
had voted no. 

To be deserted by the Parisians, on whom Napo- 
leon had lavished so much pomp, — that, indeed, 
was hard ; but the disaffection in the army meant 
danger. One desperate remedy remained, — a for- 
eign war. Victory would bring to Imperialism 
sufficient prestige to postpone for several years the 
impending collapse ; meanwhile, public attention 
would be diverted from grievances at home. 

Nemesis saw to it that rogues thus minded 
should not lack opportunity. The Spaniards 
having elected an obscure German prince to be 
their king, the French ministers announced that 
they would never suffer him to reign. Of his own 
motion, the German prince declined the election, 
but the French were not appeased. They would 
humble the King of Prussia by forcing from him 
a meek promise. King William refused to be bul- 
lied ; the French ministers proclaimed that France 



74 THRONE-MAKERS 

had been insulted. Not Imperialists only, but 
Frenchmen of all parties clamored for satisfaction. 
That love of gloire, that mercurial vanity which, 
twenty years before, had made them an easy prey 
to Louis Napoleon, now made them abettors of his 
breakneck venture. He appealed to their patriot- 
ism, the last refuge of a scoundrel, and they were 
beguiled. 

War came, the Emperor being, by common re- 
port, most reluctant to consent to its declaration. 
He was its first victim. Five weeks after taking 
the field, he surrendered with nearly one hundred 
and ninety thousand men at Sedan. The corrup- 
tion which through twenty years he had fostered, 
in all parts of the state where he expected to profit 
by it, had gangrened the army also, that branch 
which a military tyrant needs to have honestly ad- 
ministered. And now in his need the army failed 
him. He had been caught, as every one is caught 
who imagines that he can be wicked with impunity 
and still keep virtue for an ally when he needs 
her. From top to bottom his war department was 
rotten. Conscripts had, by bribe, evaded service ; 
generals had sworn to false muster-rolls ; minis- 
ters had connived with dishonest contractors. At 
Sedan, Napoleon paid the penalty of the corrup- 
tion which he had erected into a system ; at Sedan, 
moreover, he completed that cycle of parallels and 



NAPOLEON in 75 

imitations which he had made the business of his 
life. Just as Prussian Bliicher paralyzed the last 
rally of the great Napoleon at Waterloo, so Prus- 
sian Moltke achieved the ignominy of Napoleon 
the Little at Sedan. 

Men forget, even when they do not forgive. 
Frenchmen, furious at the humiliation of Sedan, 
cursed Napoleon as the author of it. But after 
a quarter of a century, although they have not 
forgiven him, they have come to look on him as 
victim rather than as villain. Later writers have 
held him up to be pitied. They describe his long 
years of suffering from the stone ; they paint him 
during that month of August, 1870, as a poor, 
abject creature of circumstances, driven to bay by 
an irresistible foe, buffeted, scorned, despised by 
his own officers and troops. They show him to us, 
speechless and in agony, lifted from his horse at 
Saarbriicken ; or huddled into a third-class railway 
carriage with a crowd of common soldiers escap- 
ing from the oncoming Prussians ; or sitting, as 
cheerless as a death's-head, at a council of war; 
now lodged in mean quarters ; now passing gloom- 
ily down regiments on their way to defeat, and 
never a voice to cry Vive V JEmpereur ; ever growing 
more and more haggard and nervous with worry, 
disaster, and endless cigarettes ; continually pelted 
with telegrams from Empress Eugenie at Paris, 



76 THRONE-MAKERS 

" Do this — do that, or the Empire is lost ; " until 
that final early morning interview with Bismarck 
in the weaver's cottage at Donchery. Latter-day 
Frenchmen, beholding such misery, have forgotten 
that Napoleon himself was chiefly responsible for 
it, and have ceased to execrate. 

In closing, let us read, from a letter Bismarck 
wrote to his wife the day after the surrender, a 
description of the meeting of Napoleon and his 
conqueror : — 

" Vendresse, Sept. 3, 1870. Yesterday morning 
at five o'clock, after I had been negotiating until 
one o'clock, A. m., with Moltke and the French 
generals about the capitulation to be concluded, I 
was awakened by General Reille, with whom I am 
acquainted, to tell me that Napoleon wished to 
speak with me. Unwashed and unbreakfasted, I 
rode towards Sedan, found the Emperor in an open 
carriage, with three aides-de-camp and three in at- 
tendance on horseback, halted on the road before 
Sedan. I dismounted, saluted him just as politely 
as at the Tuileries, and asked for his commands. 
He wished to see the King. I told him, as the 
truth was, that his Majesty had his quarters fif- 
teen miles away, at the spot where I am now writ- 
ing. In answer to Napoleon's question where he 
should go, I offered him, as I was not acquainted 



NAPOLEON III 77 

with the country, my own quarters at Donchery, a 
small place in the neighborhood, close by Sedan. 
He accepted and drove, accompanied by his six 
Frenchmen, by me and by Carl (who in the mean 
time had ridden after me), through the lonely 
morning, towards our lines. Before reaching the 
spot, he began to be troubled on account of the 
possible crowd, and he asked me if he could alight 
in a lonely cottage by the wayside. I had it in- 
spected by Carl, who brought word it was mean 
and dirty. i N'importe' > (No matter), said N., 
and I ascended with him a rickety, narrow stair- 
case. In an apartment ten feet square, with a 
deal-table and two rush-bottomed chairs, we sat 
for an hour ; the others were below. A powerful 
contrast with our last meeting in the Tuileries in 
'67. Our conversation was difficult, if I wanted 
to avoid touching on topics which could not but 
affect painfully the man whom God's mighty hand 
had cast down. I had sent Carl to fetch officers 
from the town, and to beg Moltke to come." 

That morning the terms of capitulation were 
drawn up, and the next day Napoleon went a pris- 
oner to Wilhelmshbhe, whence, in due time, he 
was allowed to depart for England. At Chisle- 
hurst, on January 9, 1873, he died, having lived to 
see not only the extinction of French Imperialism 



78 THRONE-MAKERS 

and of the temporal Papacy, but also the creation 
of the German Empire and the union of Italy. 
To prevent all of these things had been his aim. 

In a life like Garibaldi's we see what a disinter- 
ested genius can do by appealing to men's noble 
motives : the career of Louis Napoleon illustrates 
not less clearly what a man with talents and with- 
out scruples can accomplish by appealing to the 
instincts of vainglory and selfishness and terror ; 
to the instinct which bullies weak nations and 
hoists the flag where it does not belong ; to the 
instinct which has not the courage to acknowledge 
an error, but is quick to impute injuries, and 
declares that there shall be one conscience for poli- 
ticians and another for citizens. Let us not flatter 
ourselves that only the French have cherished 
these stupendous delusions; let us rather take 
warning by the retribution exacted from them. 

" Forgetful is green earth : the Gods alone 
Remember everlastingly ; they strike 
Remorselessly, and ever like for like. 
By their great memories the Gods are known." 



KOSSUTH 

The history of Hungary is in 
unique: it records the career of an alien tribe 
which, cutting its way from Eastern Asia to the 
heart of Europe, founded there a nation, and this 
nation, after the friction of a thousand years, still 
preserves its racial characteristics. In 894 Duke 
Arpad led his horde of Magyars — whose earlier 
kinsmen were Huns and Avars — up the valley of 
the Danube. Long were they a terror to Europe ; 
then, gradually, they had to content themselves 
with Hungary as their home. They became Chris- 
tians ; they adopted a monarchical government ; 
alongside of their Aryan neighbors, they took on 
mediaeval civilization. Europe, unable to expel 
or to destroy, acknowledged them as citizens. The 
time came when the Magyars, in a conflict lasting 
fivescore years, defended Europe against the in- 
vasion of another horde of Asiatic barbarians; 
till, unsupported by their neighbors, the Magyars 
succumbed to the Turks in the battle of Mohacs 
in 1526. Afterwards, for one hundred and fifty 
years, Hungary herself writhed in the hands of 




.*# 






80 THRONE-MAKERS 

the Mussulman; when that bondage ceased, she 
had a different oppressor, — Austria. 

The Hungarian monarchy was elective, and 
after the battle of Mohacs the Magyars chose for 
their king the sovereign of the Austrian states. 
The succession continued in the House of Haps- 
burg, becoming in fact hereditary ; but, before 
the Magyars accepted him as king, each Haps- 
burg candidate must be ratified by the Hungarian 
Diet, and must swear to uphold the Hungarian 
Constitution. When, however, the expulsion of 
the Turks, at the end of the seventeenth century, 
left the Austrian sovereigns free to exercise their 
authority, they set about curtailing the ancient 
liberties of Hungary. Throughout the eighteenth 
century that process went on : the Magyars pro- 
tested; the Emperor-King encroached, or, when 
the protests threatened to pass into insurrection, 
he paused for a while and gave fair promises. 

Such was the situation when the French Revo- 
tion, followed by Napoleon's colossal ambition, 
startled Europe. During the quarter century of 
upheaval, the Magyars, still pouring their griev- 
ances into Vienna, remained loyal to their King. 
After Napoleon's downfall, the Old Regime being 
firmly reestablished, Emperor Francis not only 
failed to keep his promises towards Hungary, but 
revived the old policy of Austrianization, which 



KOSSUTH 81 

meant the substitution of German for Magyar 
officials, and the removal of the chief branches of 
government to Vienna. Again the protests became 
angry, until Francis, baffled and alarmed, con- 
vened the Diet. With the year 1825, when that 
Diet met, began the modern struggle of Hungary 
to recover that home rule which one after another 
of her Hapsburg kings had solemnly sworn to 
respect, and had as perfidiously disregarded. 
Thus the seed of the Magyar revolution was sown, 
like that of so many others, in a demand for the 
restoration of acknowledged rights, and not in a 
demand for innovation. Home rule, — Hungary 
to govern herself, instead of being bullied by 
foreigners who happened to be also subjects of 
her Emperor-King, — that seemed an object as 
simple and definite as it was just. Experience 
soon showed, however, that this cause was not sim- 
ple ; that it no more could be attained alone than 
gold can be taken from quartz without crushing 
the quartz and separating the silver and lead, and 
the crushed quartz itself, from the desired gold. 
For Hungary was imbedded in an old civilization, 
which must be broken up before home rule, and 
many another modern ideal, could be attained. 

Imagine a country having an area about as 
large as the State of Colorado, inhabited by people 
sprung from four different races, — the Magyar, 



82 THRONE-MAKERS 

the Slav, the German, and the Italian : imagine, 
further, these races subdivided into eight different 
peoples, — Magyars, having poor kinsmen called 
Szeklers ; Slavs, sending forth four different 
shoots, Slovaks in the North, Croats in the South- 
west, Serbs in the South, and Wallachs in the 
East; imagine this motley population holding 
various creeds, — Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, 
Calvinist, Lutheran, and Unitarian: imagine not 
merely each race, but each people, cherishing its 
own language, its own customs, its own ambitions, 
which inevitably clashed with those of its neigh- 
bors : and having imagined all this, you have not 
yet come to the end of Hungary's complex organ- 
ism. Beside the conflicts of race and creed, there 
were political and social complications. 

The dominant race was the Magyars, who num- 
bered, however, only a third of the total popula- 
tion ; their prevailing system was the feudal. A 
few hundred great nobles, or magnates, a consid- 
erable body of small nobles and a multitude of 
artisans, tradesmen, and peasants made up the 
social strata. Every Magyar who could trace 
descent to Arpad and his followers — though he 
were but a peasant in condition — was a noble : 
members of all the other races had no political 
rights. Hungary proper comprised fifty-two coun- 
ties, each of which had its local congregation or 



KOSSUTH 83 

assembly, which met four times a year, and sent 
suggestions or bills of grievances to the Central 
Diet, composed of the Table of Magnates and 
the Table of Deputies. A Palatine or Viceroy, 
representing the Sovereign, was the actual head of 
the kingdom. Outside of Hungary proper, the 
Croats had their local Diet at Agram, and Tran- 
sylvania had hers ; both also chose representatives 
to the Hungarian Diet. In a measure, therefore, 
we may call Hungary a federation, not forgetting, 
however, that it was a federation in which one 
race, the Magyars, domineered. The Latin lan- 
guage was the common medium of communication 
between Hungary and Austria, and among the 
diverse peoples. 

The most significant event of the Diet of 1825 
was the use by Count Stephen Szechenyi of the 
Magyar language instead of the Latin. Szechenyi, 
having traveled in Western Europe, came back 
imbued with large schemes of progress. He helped 
to introduce steamboats on the Danube ; he founded 
a Magyar Academy; he proposed to join Buda 
and Pesth by a suspension bridge. By stimulating 
the material welfare of his country, he hoped 
that many of the social abuses would vanish with- 
out a struggle. And now his use of the Magyar 
language was a symptom of the awakening of 
the spirit of nationality, — one of the controlling 



84 THRONE-MAKERS 

motives in the history of Europe during the nine- 
teenth century. In Hungary, as elsewhere, the 
arousing of that spirit was evidenced not only by 
an intenser political life, but also by a literary 
revival. 

In direct reforms the Diet of 1825 accom- 
plished little, — the Austrian government being 
still adroit in postponing a settlement, — but it was 
important in so far as it revealed the presence of 
new forces, whose nature was as yet undetermined. 
By the time another Diet assembled, in 1832, sev- 
eral questions had taken a definite shape. Fore- 
most, of course, was Hungary's demand of home 
rule, in which all Magyars stood side by side ; but 
when it came to internal affairs, they inevitably 
disagreed. The advanced Liberals proposed to 
emancipate the serfs, to extend the suffrage, and 
to abolish many of the privileges of the aristo- 
cracy. How grievous was the condition of the 
Hungarian serf may be inferred from the fact 
that, in spite 'of an improvement decreed by Maria 
Theresa, he was still bound to contribute to his 
landlord the equivalent of more than one hundred 
days' labor a year ; he had no civic rights, and no 
other chance of redress than in the manorial court 
presided over by his master. The nobles, on the 
other hand, paid no taxes, ruled the county assem- 
blies, appointed magistrates, and, except in case of 



KOSSUTH 85 

a foreign invasion, rendered no military service, in 
return for all their exorbitant immunities. 

That Magyar aristocracy has played so promi- 
nent a part in the history of Hungary that we may 
pause a moment to describe it. In 1830 the Mag- 
yar magnate was still the most picturesque noble 
in Europe. Like the Spanish grandee and the 
Venetian senator of an earlier time, he represented 
one of the highest expressions of the privileged 
classes. He was haughty, but warm-hearted ; emo- 
tional, but brave : appeal to his honor, to his 
magnanimity, and — as Maria Theresa found — he 
would forget his grievances, disregard his interests, 
and devote himself body and soul to your cause. 
He might be ignorant, a spendthrift, an exacting 
master, but in his capacity for generosity he was 
— by whatever standard — truly a noble. In old 
times his forefathers had assembled every year, or 
when an emergency required, on the plain of 
Eakos, — a host of gallant warriors, in brilliant 
armor and gorgeous cloaks and trappings. There 
they deliberated — perhaps chose a king or deposed 
one — and then each rode home with his retinue, 
to live in a splendor half-barbaric for another 
year. In his dress the Magyar had an Oriental 
love of color, and in his music there is a similar 
glow, a similar charm. 

As late as 1840 both the magnates and the 



86 THRONE-MAKERS 

lesser nobility clung to their national costume as 
loyally as to their national constitution. " It now 
consists of the attilla" writes Paget at that date, 
" a frock coat, reaching nearly to the knee, with a 
military collar, and covered in front with gold 
lace ; over this is generally worn, hanging loosely 
on one shoulder, the mente, a somewhat larger 
coat, lined with fur, and with a fur cape. It is 
generally suspended by some massive jeweled 
chain. The tight pantaloons and ankle-boots, with 
the never-failing spurs, form the lower part. The 
kalpak, or fur cap, is of innumerable forms, and 
ornamented by a feather fastened by a rich brooch. 
The white heron's plume, or aigrette, the rare 
product of the Southern Danube, is the most 
esteemed. The neck is opened, except for a black 
ribbon loosely passed round it, the ends of which 
are finished with gold fringe. The sabre is in the 
shape of the Turkish scimitar; indeed, richly orna- 
mented Damascus blades, the spoils of some unsuc- 
cessful Moslem invasion, are very often worn, and 
are highly prized. 

"The sword-belt is frequently a heavy gold 
chain, such as our ancient knights wore over their 
armor. The colors, as in many respects the form, 
of the Hungarian uniform, depend entirely on the 
taste of the individual, and vary from the simple 
blue dress of the hussar, with white cotton lace, to 



KOSSUTH 87 

the rich stuffs, covered with pearls and diamonds, 
of the Prince Esterhazy. 

" On the whole, I know of no dress so hand- 
some, so manly, and at the same time so con- 
venient. It is only on gala days that gay and 
embroidered dresses are used; on ordinary occa- 
sions, as sittings of the Diet, county meetings, and 
others in which it is customary to wear uniform, 
dark colors with black silk lace, and trousers, or 
Hessian boots, are commonly used." 1 

Such, in its dress, was the Magyar aristocracy 
which the reformers set themselves to overcome ; 
and in their character those Magyar nobles — 
were they magnates or simply gentlemen — cher- 
ished a tenacity of class unsurpassed by any other 
aristocrats in Europe. Nevertheless, the reform- 
ers boldly put forth a programme which involved 
the complete social and political reorganization 
of the country, — even throwing down a challenge 
to the aristocracy to surrender privileges in which 
these deemed their very existence rooted. Parties 
had begun to array themselves on these lines 
when Louis Kossuth entered public life. 

Born at the village of Monok, Zemplen County, 
on April 27, 1802, Kossuth had for his father a 
lesser noble, Slavic in origin, Lutheran in faith, 

1 John Paget, Hungary and Transylvania (new edition, New 
York, 1850), i, 249, 250. 



88 THRONE-MAKERS 

and lawyer by profession. The son received a 
good education, and began to practice law, which 
led easily to politics. He sat in his county assem- 
bly, was early conspicuous as an advocate of pop- 
ular rights and as an eloquent speaker. Thus 
equipped, he took his seat in the Diet of 1832, 
where, as proxy to a magnate, he had a voice 
but no vote. There seemed slight chance of his 
emerging from his proxy's obscurity, but to gen- 
ius all conditions are fluid. Kossuth conceived 
the plan of publishing the reports of the debates 
in the Diet. The government permitted no news- 
papers, and trimmed all other publications to suit 
its views ; but the members of both Houses could 
speak freely, without danger of arrest for any of 
their utterances in the Diet. To circulate their 
speeches would, therefore, as Kossuth saw, put 
within reach of the Hungarians a mass of political 
reading not otherwise obtainable. Hardly had he 
begun to publish, ere government signified its 
desire of buying his press. Deprived of this, he 
employed secretaries who wrote out his abstracts 
of the proceedings and sent them through the 
mails to their destination. Government ordered 
its postmen to confiscate and destroy. Still un- 
vanquished, Kossuth dispatched his budgets by 
special messengers. Government was foiled. By 
these devices, before the close of the Diet in 1836, 



KOSSUTH 89 

Kossuth — the obscure magnate's proxy — had be- 
come one of the most widely known men in the 
kingdom. The reports were literally his reports, 
giving not only the tenor of the chief debates, but 
also his comments thereon. 

He now proposed to edit in similar fashion the 
proceedings of the quarterly meetings of the fifty- 
two county assemblies ; but Government, no longer 
restrained by his inviolability as member of the 
Diet, arrested him. He spent two years in prison, 
denied books and all intercourse with his friends, 
before his case came to trial: then he was sen- 
tenced to a further confinement of four years, 
during which his great solace was the study of 
Shakespeare. 

Meanwhile, political and social agitation was 
swelling. The King, thinking a European war 
over the Eastern Question imminent, summoned 
another Diet to vote him a fresh subsidy and more 
soldiers. But the Diet, indignant and headstrong, 
refused all help till Kossuth and some other po- 
litical prisoners should be released. The King 
yielded. Kossuth came forth a national hero. 

After several months spent in recuperating his 
health, Kossuth, in January, 1841, established the 
Pesti Hirlapi or Pesth Gazette. That Govern- 
ment acquiesced in this project showed how far 
the tide of Liberalism had risen. It showed, too, 



90 THRONE-MAKERS 

that Government was astute, — hoping in this way 
to rob Kossuth of his martyr's halo ; deeming it 
wiser to let him publish openly than surrepti- 
tiously ; trusting, above all, to the sharpness of its 
censors' eyes and scissors. Kossuth, on his side, 
was equally cunning, versed in the art of dressing 
his opinions in such guise that the censor could 
not object to them, though they carried a meaning 
which his readers knew how to interpret according 
to his intention. He wrote on all topics with a 
vehemence and an Oriental heat which won him 
tens of thousands of admirers. Like any Mag- 
yar patriot, he could count on one of the most 
powerful of allies, — the race hatred between his 
countrymen and the Austrians. The very word 
" German " signified, in the Magyar language, vile, 
base, despicable. There was a Magyar proverb to 
the effect that." German is the only language God 
does not understand." Innumerable illustrations 
of this antipathy might be cited, but the following, 
which Paget tells, will serve as well as another : 
The proprietor of a theatre produced what he con- 
sidered a fine piece of scenery, in which was repre- 
sented a full moon, with round, fat, clean-shaved 
face. When it rose, the audience hissed, and 
shouted, " Down with the German moon ! " The 
manager took the hint ; next night there rose 
a swarthy-cheeked, black-moustachioed orb. Hur- 



KOSSUTH 91 

rahs burst from every mouth, and all cried, " Long 
live our own true Magyar moon ! " 

Doubt not that Kossuth knew how to kindle 
the fuel which ages of hatred had been storing. 
He had the gift peculiar to really great popular 
leaders of appealing directly to racial pride and 
passion ; so it mattered little that he dealt in gen- 
eralizations. Speaking broadly, he preached the 
abolition of feudalism and the aggrandizement of 
the Magyar nationality. The former purpose 
brought him and the Liberals into conflict with 
the conservative aristocracy ; the latter inflamed 
against the Magyars the long-smouldering hatred 
of their subject peoples. 

For the spirit of nationality had awakened these 
also. The Slavs of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalma- 
tia dreamed of establishing a great Slavic king- 
dom in Southeastern Europe ; they, too, were 
putting forth a literature. Their Illyrism — to 
their prospective nation they gave the name 
" Illyria " — clashed with the recrudescent Mag- 
yarism. When the Hungarian Diet decreed that 
the Magyar language should be taught in their 
schools, and that every official must use it, they 
protested as strenuously as the Magyars themselves 
had protested when Austria tried to impose the 
German language and German officials on them. 
" The Magyars are an island in the Slavic ocean," 



92 THRONE-MAKERS 

exclaimed Gaj, the poet and spokesman of Illyr- 
ism, to the Hungarian Diet : " I did not make 
this ocean, I did not stir up its waves ; but take 
care that they do not go over your heads and 
drown you." Nevertheless, the law was passed. 
In the Southland the Serbs along the Danube, 
in the East the Wallachs of Transylvania, feeling 
the first tingle of national aspirations, resented 
this encroachment. Austria — whose motto was, 
Divide et imp era — found her advantage in em- 
bittering tribe with tribe and class with class. 

For three years and a half Kossuth's Gazette 
had an unprecedented influence in Hungary ; but 
in the summer of 1844, disagreeing with his pub- 
lisher over a matter of salary, he resigned, and 
expected to found another journal which should 
draw off the Gazette's patrons. Government, 
however, refused to grant him a license. Accord- 
ingly, he devoted himself to agitation in another 
form. In the assembly of the County of Pesth, 
he discussed with matchless eloquence the great 
political questions ; outside, he organized an eco- 
nomical crusade. Austria burdened Hungary with 
a tariff which stunted her industrial and com- 
mercial development. Kossuth created a league 
whose members vowed for five years to use only 
Hungarian products. He projected a railway to 
Fiume, to secure an outlet for exporting Hunga- 



KOSSUTH 93 

rian goods. He urged the establishment of sav- 
ings banks and of mercantile corporations. And 
for a brief time, under this patriotic stimulus, 
trade flourished. 

Thus through all the arteries of the body politic 
new blood was throbbing. Give a people a great 
idea, and they will find how to apply it to every 
concern of life. The Magyar Liberals were surely 
undermining feudalism; their race was growing 
more and more restive at Austria's obstinate de- 
lays. When Austria removed the native county 
sheriffs and put German administrators in their 
stead, all the Magyar factions joined in denoun- 
cing such an assault on their national life. The 
county system had been the safeguard of Hun- 
gary's political institutions for well-nigh eight 
hundred years; the sheriff was the foremost of- 
ficial in the county, to whose guidance its interests 
and civic activity were intrusted. To make an 
alien sheriff was therefore to check national agi- 
tation at its source. Accordingly, the Diet which 
met in the autumn of 1847 met full of defiance 
and resentment, though the platform of the Liber- 
als, drawn up by the judicial Deak, wore on its 
surface a conciliatory aspect. After a hot can- 
vass, Kossuth was elected to represent Pesth in 
the Chamber of Deputies. A few sessions sufficed 
to establish his preeminence as an orator, and his 
leadership of the Liberal party. 



94 THRONE-MAKERS 

During the winter months of 1847-48 but little 
was done, though much was discussed. As usual, 
the Magnates resisted the reforms aimed at their 
class ; as usual, Government temporized and post- 
poned. Suddenly, at the beginning of March, 
1848, news reached Presburg of the revolution in 
Paris, and of the flight of Louis Philippe. That 
news passed like a torch throughout Europe, kin- 
dling as it passed the fires of revolt. At Presburg, 
on March 3, Kossuth rose in the Diet and inter- 
rupted a debate on the financial difficulties with 
Austria. That question of finance, he said, could 
never be settled separately; in it was involved 
the whole question of Austria's disregard of Hun- 
gary's rights. Hungary must have her own laws, 
her own ministry ; taxation must be equal ; the 
franchise must be extended. More than that, he 
added, Hungary could never prosper until every 
part of the Empire should be governed by uniform 
constitutional methods. 

Kossuth's " baptismal speech of the revolution " 
took the Lower House by storm. An address to 
the Throne was framed, which, after fruitless re- 
luctance on the part of the Magnates, a large com- 
mittee, headed by Kossuth and Count Louis Bat- 
thyanyi, — the Liberal leader in the Upper House, 
— carried twelve days later to Vienna. The dele- 
gates found the Austrian capital in an uproar. 



KOSSUTH 95 

On March 13 Metternich, deserted by the aris- 
tocracy on whose behalf he had labored unscrupu- 
lously for fifty years, had been hounded from 
office. The people, after a bloody struggle, had 
possession of the city, and they welcomed Kossuth 
as a deliverer ; for his " baptismal speech " had 
made their aims articulate. 

The next day, Emperor Ferdinand received the 
deputation very graciously, and promised to grant 
their petition. Exulting, they returned to Pres- 
burg. A Cabinet was formed in which Batthy- 
anyi held the premiership, and Kossuth the port- 
folio of finance. Soon, very soon, tremendous 
difficulties beset them: Eadicals clamored for a 
republic ; the subject races revolted ; the Imperial 
government proved perfidious. 

The key to Austria's subsequent conduct is 
this : Austria, at heart a coward, had long been 
able to play the bully ; now, however, her outraged 
peoples had risen in wrath and held her at their 
mercy ; the bully cringed, promised, conceded ; 
concession brought a temporary respite from dan- 
ger ; thereupon she began to think she had been 
unduly terrified and to regret her concessions; 
so she cautiously put out feelers of arrogance, to 
resume her role of bully. When she met sharp 
resistance, she quickly drew back again, to await 
a better opportunity. Throughout this crisis, Em- 



96 THRONE-MAKERS 

peror Ferdinand, at his best a man of mediocre 
capacity, was becoming imbecile through epilepsy, 
and a Court clique, or Camarilla, ruled him and 
the Empire. 

All this was not yet clear to the Hungarians. 
Assuming the Imperial assurances to be honest, 
they passed a reform bill abolishing the privileges 
of the nobles, who were to be compensated by the 
state for the loss they sustained in the emancipa- 
tion of their serfs. Bills authorizing equal taxa- 
tion, trial by jury, freedom of speech, the abolition 
of tithes, and the extension of the franchise to 
one million two hundred thousand voters, were 
adopted with but little discussion. Religious tol- 
eration — except for Jews — became the law of the 
land. 

The Magnates having made this unparalleled 
sacrifice, King Ferdinand came over to Presburg 
and dissolved the Diet in a speech approving its 
action, and reiterating his pledge to uphold the 
Constitution. The Cabinet proceeded to organize 
its administration, — a task which would have been 
sufficient at any time to keep it busy, but now 
extraordinary and urgent matters pressed upon 
it. The Wallachs, Serbs, and Croats rose in rebel- 
lion. Most alarming was the situation in Croatia, 
where the Slavs were agitating for separation from 
Hungary. Baron Jellachich, who had just been 



KOSSUTH 97 

appointed Ban or Viceroy of Croatia, abetting the 
insurrection, strengthened the Croat army. In 
June the Magyar ministers hurried to Innspruck 
— whither the Emperor and Camarilla had fled 
after a second outbreak in Vienna — to protest 
against these rebellious acts. The Emperor as- 
sured them that he had given the Ban no sanc- 
tion ; that he had, indeed, dismissed him from the 
Imperial service. It happened that Jellachich was 
at Innspruck at this very moment, carrying the 
notification of dismissal in his pocket, and in his 
mind an unwritten commission to serve Austria 
against Hungary. 

The rebellion of the Serbs, accompanied by 
unspeakable atrocities, was openly fomented by 
Austrian agents ; likewise the outbreak in Tran- 
sylvania. Hungary's embarrassments increased ; 
she had still to accept Ferdinand's assurances of 
good faith, for he was her legal king; but now 
she knew that the Camarilla, the actual Imperial 
government, was instigating her enemies. 

The newly elected National Assembly convened 
at Pesth, the ancient capital, early in July. The 
royal address condemned by implication Jellachich 
and all rebels, but the insurrection grew in vio- 
lence from day to day. On July 11 Kossuth 
made in the Assembly the most effective speech of 
his life. Posterity stands incredulous before the 



98 THRONE-MAKERS 

record of great orators who, Orpheus-like, are said 
to have moved stocks and stones by their voice ; 
yet not on this account must we disbelieve the 
record. For posterity can never supply the one 
thing needful to the consummate orator's success, 
— it can never supply the state of mind of his 
audience. We shall always find that the epoch- 
making speech was addressed to listeners every 
one of whom had long been burning to hear just 
those words. This is why so many of the orations 
that altered history look faded on the printed 
page ; this is why we must in many cases judge 
the orator as we judge the singer or the actor, — 
by the effect he produces on his contemporaries. 
Kossuth, by this standard, ranks with the first 
orators of the century, though a later generation 
is little thrilled by his printed speeches. Men who 
heard him, even those who heard him speak in a 
language not his own, and who had listened to 
Webster and Clay and Choate, declare that they 
never heard his equal. Upon his own country- 
men, to whom his words came charged with the 
associations which belong to one's mother-tongue, 
his eloquence was irresistible. 

In that 11th of July speech, at least, we, too, 
after long years, can feel the glow. The occasion 
itself was dramatic. Every deputy realized that 
the crisis of the revolution was at hand, — that 



KOSSUTH 99 

Hungary must either turn back, or dare to plunge 
into an unknown and perilous sea. All were wait- 
ing for the decisive word. 

Kossuth, just risen from a bed of sickness, with 
tottering steps mounted the tribune. He was a 
man of medium height; his hair was brown, his 
eyes blue ; he wore a full mustache and cut his 
beard sailor-wise, so that it formed a shaggy fringe 
beneath his smooth-shaven chin. At first, as he 
spoke, his pallid face and feeble gestures, though 
they enhanced the solemnity of his words, made 
his hearers dread a collapse ; but presently he 
seemed to be fired with the strength which burned 
in his subject, and they listened for two hours, 
spell-bound and electrified. 

" I feel," he said to them, " as if God had put 
in my hands the trumpet to rouse the dead, that, 
if sinners and weak, they may sink back into 
death, but that, if the vigor of life is still in them, 
they may waken to eternity." He then went on to 
review the quarrel with Croatia, declaring that 
to that country Hungary had, from immemorial 
time, accorded all the privileges which she herself 
enjoyed, and that recently she had conceded to the 
Croats a wider use of their native language. " I 
can understand a people," he said ironically, " who, 
deeming the freedom they possess too little, take 
up arms to acquire more, though they play, in- 



100 THRONE-MAKERS 

deed, a hazardous game, for such weapons are two- 
edged ; but I cannot understand a people who say, 
i The freedom you offer us is too great, — we will 
not accept your offer, but will go and submit our- 
selves to the yoke of Absolutism.' " Kossuth next 
touched on the situation in the South, and showed 
wherein it differed from that in the Southwest. 
He told how the Camarilla had sought to compel 
the ministers to acknowledge the unlawful preten- 
sions of Croatia, and thereby to annul the pledges 
of the King. He pointed out, as an ominous cloud 
on the eastern horizon, the recent appearance of a 
Russian army along the Pruth. When, after this 
review, he solemnly announced, " The fatherland 
is in danger," not a deputy was surprised, not a 
head shook incredulously. At last he asked for 
authority to levy two hundred thousand soldiers, 
and to raise a loan of forty-two million florins, 
setting forth the means by which he planned to 
meet this extraordinary measure as eloquently as 
he had set forth its need. 

He had held the Assembly captivated for two 
hours ; now, as he was closing, his strength failed, 
and he could not speak. The deputies, too, were 
speechless. For a brief moment intense silence 
reigned between him and them. Then Paul Nyary, 
who only yesterday had attacked the policy of the 
Cabinet, rose, lifted his right hand as if invoking 



KOSSUTH 101 

God to be his witness, and exclaimed, " We grant 
everything! " In a flash four hundred hands were 
raised, and four hundred voices repeated Nyary's 
covenant. When quiet came again, Kossuth had 
recovered strength to say that his request should 
not be taken as a demand for a vote of confidence. 
" We ask your vote for the preservation of the 
country; and, sirs, if any breast sighs for free- 
dom, if any desire waits for fulfilment, let that 
breast suffer a little longer, let it have patience 
until we have saved the fatherland. You have all 
risen to a man, and I bow before the great-hearted- 
ness of the nation, while I ask one thing more : let 
your energy equal your patriotism, and the gates 
of hell itself shall not prevail against Hungary ! " 

In March, under the magic of Kossuth's irre- 
sistible oratory, the Magyars had boldly demanded 
their constitutional rights ; now in July, thrilled 
by the same magic, they pledged themselves to 
defend their independence to the death. 

The summer passed amid recruiting of Hon- 
veds, volunteer " defenders of the fatherland," the 
attempt to quell the insurrection in Transylvania 
and among the Serbs, and the renewed intrigues 
of the Imperial Court to browbeat the Hungarian 
Cabinet. In September, Jellachich, at last avow- 
edly in the service of Austria, prepared to invade 
Hungary. 



102 THRONE-MAKERS 

The Palatine, unable to bring about a reconcili- 
ation, quitted the country. The Viennese Cabinet 
appointed Count Lamberg to assume full control 
of the military affairs in the kingdom ; the Hun- 
garians pronounced his appointment unconstitu- 
tional, and they were right. On his arrival at 
Pesth, he was murdered by a mob. This rash 
crime caused some of the Liberals to withdraw 
horrified. Batthyanyi resigned the premiership, 
and a Committee of National Defense, in which 
Kossuth predominated, was chosen. On October 2, 
the Camarilla, grown truculent, dispatched Recsey 
to dissolve the Hungarian Assembly, and bade 
Hungary to submit to Jellachich. The Magyars 
heeded neither command. Having equity and 
law on their side, they acted henceforth on the 
assumption that the orders which emanated from 
Vienna could not be attributed to Ferdinand with- 
out imputing perjury to him. 

War could no longer be avoided. The Com- 
mittee of National Defense displayed great energy 
in organizing resistance. Kossuth's eloquence 
went over the land, and the cloddish peasant left 
the plough, the well-to-do tradesman deserted his 
shop, the lawyer dropped his brief, to become vol- 
unteers in the service of their country. A third 
outbreak at Vienna sent the Camarilla hurrying 
off to Olmiitz, and seemed for a moment to assure 



KOSSUTH 103 

the final triumph of the revolution. During the 
three weeks which elapsed before an Austrian 
army under Prince Windischgratz — he who said 
that " human beings begin with barons " — could 
be brought up, the Hungarians debated whether 
they should go to the assistance of the Viennese, 
for they wished to be strictly legal. At last they 
found justification in the plea that they had a 
right to pursue Jellachich, who was marching to 
join Windischgratz, across the Austrian frontier. 
But they decided too late. Their troops were 
beaten at Schwechat, on the outskirts of Vienna, 
just as Windischgratz was successfully storming 
the city (October 29). 

For six weeks thereafter Windischgratz devoted 
himself to stamping out the rebellion in Vienna, 
and in preparing for a campaign against Hungary. 
On December 2 poor, weak-witted Ferdinand ab- 
dicated, and his nephew Francis Joseph succeeded 
him as emperor. This change betokened the 
returning confidence of the Court party. They 
now felt sure of crushing the revolution, and of 
restoring the Old Regime ; but they had no inten- 
tion that, when the rest of Austria was re-subjected 
to their despotism, Hungary alone should enjoy a 
constitutional government. Yet this had been pro- 
mised by Ferdinand, and he had scruples against 
openly violating his oath. Therefore, by remov- 



104 THRONE-MAKERS 

ing him and substituting Francis Joseph, they 
had a sovereign unhampered by pledges. To this 
scheme the Magyars naturally did not bend ; their 
Constitution was their life, and that Constitution 
recognized no king who had not been crowned by 
the Magyars, and had not sworn to preserve their 
rights inviolate. 

Ten days before Christmas, Windischgratz 
opened his campaign. Five armies besides his 
own invaded Hungary from five different direc- 
tions. The Magyars had employed the six weeks' 
lull in defensive preparations. They gave Arthur 
Gorgei, an ex-officer thirty-one years old, — able, 
stern, selfish, and inordinately ambitious, — the 
command of the Army of the Upper Danube. He 
proposed to abandon the frontier and to mass the 
Hungarian forces in the interior, where they could 
choose their own ground ; but the Committee of 
Defense insisted that every inch of Hungarian 
soil should be contested. A fortnight's operations 
proved the wisdom of Gorgei's plan : the Magyars 
were easily driven back, and on New Year's eve 
the Austrians camped within gunshot of Buda- 
Pesth. The following day, January 1, 1849, a 
melancholy procession of ministers, deputies, state 
officials, fearful citizens, and stragglers, set out 
from Pesth, carrying with them the precious crown 
of St. Stephen, the public coffers and archives, and 



KOSSUTH , 105 

the printing-presses for bank-notes. Debreczin, a 
town forty leagues inland, became the temporary- 
capital. At Buda-Pesth, Windischgratz celebrated 
his triumph by holding a Bloody Assize. To en- 
voys from the fugitive government who asked him 
to state his conditions, he only replied, " I do not 
treat with rebels." 

Among the Magyars, consternation was quickly 
succeeded by a mood of desperation, — such a 
mood as made France invincible in 1792. Again 
did Kossuth's eloquence pass like the breath of 
life over the land ; again did his energy direct the 
equipment of new recruits and fill the gaps of the 
regiments already in the field. Had the deputies 
at Debreczin voted as they wished, they would have 
voted for peace ; but they knew that the majority 
of their countrymen would reject any peace which 
Austria was likely to offer, and they were ashamed 
to appear less daring than Kossuth. 

The enthusiasm, we might call it the reckless- 
ness, with which the Magyars rallied to repel in- 
vasion, became a people who counted John Hun- 
yadi and Francis Rakoczy among their national 
heroes. Thanks to their patriotic fervor, the Hun- 
garian cause, which seemed about to collapse at 
the beginning of January, seemed about to prevail 
at the end of March. Bern had worsted the Wal- 
lachs and Austrian s in Transylvania ; Gbrgei had 



106 THRONE-MAKERS 

redeemed Northern Hungary; Klapka and Dam- 
janics had brought Windischgratz to bay in the 
midlands. 

Well had it been for Hungary if these astonish- 
ing successes had prevented internal discord, for 
twofold dissensions now threatened to sap the 
growing strength. From one side, the generals 
chafed at being subordinate to the civilian Com- 
mittee of Defense ; on the other, a large body of 
soldiers and of civilians were angry at the evident 
drift of Kossuth and his friends towards a repub- 
lic. Gbrgei, the most conspicuous of the generals, 
led this opposition. He declared in a manifesto 
that the army would fight to maintain against 
every foreign enemy the Constitution granted by 
Ferdinand, but that they would favor no attempt to 
convert the constitutional monarchy into a repub- 
lic. The Committee of Defense, most eager in 
their patriotism, could not refrain from meddling ; 
they suffered from the delusion common to such 
committees, and believed that they knew better 
than the trained men of war how war should be 
waged. They felt, too, political responsibilities 
which made them all the more active ; and they 
had, as was natural, their favorites among the offi- 
cers. Had the government been strong, it would 
have cashiered Gorgei ; being weak, and solicitous 
of conciliating so important a man, it tolerated him. 



KOSSUTH 107 

But when a government and its generals distrust 
each other, — as we learned in our civil war, — 
conciliation can satisfy neither. If Gorgei lost a 
battle, his enemies charged him with lukewarm- 
ness or disobedience ; he retorted by blaming the 
committee for failing to support him or for break- 
ing in upon his plans. We need not sift the re- 
criminations in detail : it suffices for us to know 
that, from January on, Gorgei and Kossuth, and 
their respective partisans, worked thus at odds. 

Nevertheless, among the masses these quarrels 
had but slight effect. The average Magyar was 
simply bent on avenging his long score of oppres- 
sion against Austria. He realized that his own 
existence depended on that of Hungary, and to 
him Kossuth's eloquence was like a trumpet-call 
of duty. That in performing his duty the Magyar 
might lawfully wreak vengeance on his oppressors, 
made duty doubly attractive. 

In the early spring, Austria closed the way to 
compromise by proclaiming a new charter for the 
whole Empire. This charter declared that all the 
provinces of the Empire were to be reduced to a 
common equality, deprived of local rights, and 
governed by a central administration at Vienna. 

The Magyars, then, had nothing to hope. 
Whether they submitted to Austria or were con- 
quered by her, their ancient Constitution would be 



108 THRONE-MAKERS 

blotted out. They would cease to be a nation. 
Accordingly, on April 14, 1849, they proclaimed 
the independence of Hungary, calling God and 
man to witness the wrongs she had suffered from 
the House of Hapsburg, and setting forth the 
illegality, truculence, and perfidy of Austria dur- 
ing the past thirteen months. A diet was to be 
summoned, which should determine the form of 
government that Hungary would permanently 
adopt ; meanwhile Kossuth was chosen president- 
governor, and by appointing Gorgei commander- 
in-chief he hoped to heal old wounds. 

The moment was propitious. The Austrians 
had been beaten in a great battle (at Isaszeg) on 
April 7 ; and most of the fortresses, except Buda, 
had been recaptured. Gorgei himself seemed sat- 
isfied. The elated Magyars dreamed even of a 
swift campaign against Vienna, and of bringing 
the Imperial tyrant to terms which should be 
acceptable to all his subject races. But their 
dream, if ever attainable, was spoiled by delay. 
Gorgei insisted that Buda must be retaken before 
he marched farther west, and only on May 21 did 
he succeed in storming its citadel. By that time a 
new peril, more terrible than any previous, loomed 
up. Austria, in despair of subjugating Hungary, 
had besought Russia to help her, and the Czar, 
glad of an excuse for interfering, was marshaling 
his troops on the Hungarian frontier. 



KOSSUTH 109 

No assistance could the Magyars secure to offset 
this threatened intervention. France and Eng- 
land would not even recognize their republic, 
although Frenchmen and Englishmen privately 
sympathized with their cause. From Venice alone, 
the little republic round whose neck the Austrian 
noose was already tightening, came a heartfelt 
recognition, which, however, added not a soldier to 
their army nor a florin to their purse. Desperate, 
but not yet willing to surrender, the Magyars 
nerved themselves for a final effort. Kossuth 
proclaimed a crusade, a levy in mass ; every man 
to arm himself, were it only with a scythe or a 
bludgeon ; perpetual prayers to be offered up in 
the churches; the enemy to be harassed at all 
places, to be hindered by the destruction of bridges 
and stores, and, wherever possible, by open fight- 
ing- 
Posterity, calmly reviewing a death struggle like 
this, is amazed that any people could be roused to 
make that last stand. Plainly enough, the Mag- 
yars had three soldiers against them to every one 
of theirs ; ammunition and victuals were failing 
them; their treasury was empty; their armies 
could expect no reinforcements : to what end, 
therefore, protract a hopeless war? Reasoning 
thus, we miss the secret, not only of the revolution- 
ists of 1848-49, but of all who have ever been 



110 THRONE-MAKERS 

kindled by patriotism to defend a cause they held 
dearer than life. The Magyars would never have 
gone thus far, — never have felt during that May- 
month the fleeting exhilaration of victory, — had 
they not been fired by a passion which not disaster 
but death alone could quench. 

The Russian invasion being assured, the Magyar 
government held a council of war, at which it was 
proposed to consolidate the various armies, and to 
defeat first the Austrians coming from the west 
and then the Russians coming from the north 
and east, — a sensible plan, frustrated, however, 
by delays, some of which were unavoidable. The 
Austrian army, strengthened by reinforcements 
from Italy, and commanded by Marshal Haynau, 
who came red-handed from Brescia, advanced into 
Hungary, and defeated Gorgei on the river Waag 
(June 20-21). The Magyar Government and 
Diet departed for the second time, in melancholy 
procession, from their capital. By the middle of 
July one hundred and fifty thousand Russians — 
eighty thousand of whom were led by the wolfish 
Paskevitch — had penetrated into the heart of the 
country. Inevitably, the Magyar forces would 
be driven in and caught between the victorious 
enemies : nevertheless, they would not yet submit. 

Internal discord alone tarnished the record of 
the last days of the Hungarian Republic. On 



KOSSUTH 111 

July 1, Kossuth removed Gorgei for insubordina- 
tion, but Gorgei's officers and men protested so 
loudly that Kossuth thought it discreet to rein- 
state him. Three weeks later, a fraction of the 
Diet, assembled at Szegedin, declared the equality 
of all the races in Hungary, emancipated the Jews, 
and then, warned by the rumble of hostile cannon, 
it dissolved forever. 

For yet a few weeks we have news of Kossuth 
hurrying hither and thither to proclaim hope 
where no hope was ; conferring with nonplussed 
but still resolute generals ; dragging after him, 
like his shadow, those printing-presses for bank- 
notes, now worth no more than blank paper. 
Finally, at Arad, he resigned the presidency, and 
appointed Gorgei dictator with full powers. At 
Vilagos, on August 13, Gorgei surrendered his 
exhausted army of twenty-three thousand men to 
Eiidiger, the Russian general. Thus was con- 
summated what the Magyars, frenzied by defeat, 
branded as Gorgei's treason, but what, to an 
impartial observer, appears an inevitable act. 
Gorgei's course throughout the war cannot be 
commended : inordinate personal ambition, not 
treason, was its motive ; he may have thought to 
play the part of Monk, but more likely he had 
taken Napoleon for his model ; one thing alone is 
certain, — he did not intend that Kossuth should 



112 THRONE-MAKERS 

reap the glory of victory, if victory came. In sur- 
rendering at Vilagos he did what every commander 
is justified in doing, when further resistance could 
only entail fresh losses without any hope of alter- 
ing the result. 

Learning the capitulation of the main army, 
the other generals one by one submitted. Klapka 
alone maintained an heroic defense at Comorn 
until September 27, when hunger and an empty 
magazine forced him to surrender. With the 
hauling down of the red-white-and-green flag from 
the citadel of Comorn vanished the last symbol 
of that revolution which, bursting forth at Palermo 
in January, 1848, had spread through Europe, 
shaking the thrones of monarchs, and kindling in 
down-trodden people the belief that a new epoch, 
a Golden Age of Liberty, had come. Hopes as 
splendid as men ever cherished had now been 
shattered, and in their stead only the bitterest 
memories remained ; for as each people pondered 
in sorrow and oppression the events of those 
twenty months, it was tormented by the reflection 
that its own dissensions, not less than the might 
of its enemies, had wrought its ruin. 

Austria, careful by a deceitful silence to en- 
courage the stray bodies of Magyar troops to give 
themselves up, proceeded to punish Hungary with 
a severity which matched the persecutions of the 



KOSSUTH 113 

French Reign of Terror. In every city Marshal 
Haynau set up his shambles ; in every parish he 
plied his scourge. Imprisonment, torture, confis- 
cation, overtook the lowly defenders of the Magyar 
cause ; death awaited the leaders. On October 6, 
at Arad, fourteen generals were hanged or shot, 
and that same day Count Louis Batthyanyi was 
shot at Pesth. Gorgei was spared, thanks to the 
personal intervention of Czar Nicholas. 

Kossuth and several thousand Magyars took 
refuge in Turkey. The Sultan protected him, in 
spite of the threats of Russia and Austria, — pro- 
tected him because the Turkish religion forbade 
the betrayal of a refugee, — but kept him for 
nearly two years in half bondage. Then the Mag- 
yar hero, at the instance of the American Con- 
gress, was permitted to embark on an American 
man-of-war. He came to the United States, where 
he was greeted with an enthusiasm which no other 
foreigner except Lafayette had stirred. He got 
boundless sympathy, and no inconsiderable sum 
of money for prosecuting the emancipation of 
Hungary; but the times were unfavorable, and 
the lot of the Magyars concerned very little the 
rulers of European diplomacy after 1850. Re- 
turning to Europe, Kossuth made agitation his 
sole aim. He strove to interest the great powers 
in Hungary's fate ; he strove, through secret 



114 THRONE-MAKERS 

emissaries, to provoke the Magyars themselves to 
rebel. The former were deaf; the latter, taught 
by terrible experience, deemed it folly to attack 
Austria again in the field. Through the persist- 
ent and judicious political agitation led by the 
sagacious Francis Deak, they achieved, in 1867, 
a recognition of their constitutional rights, and 
a full measure of home rule. 

Kossuth, however, refused to the last to be re- 
conciled. He lived in exile at Turin, a forlorn 
old man, forlorn but inflexible, amid the memo- 
ries of exploits which once had amazed the world. 
There he died on March 20, 1894, having survived 
all his contemporaries, friends and foes alike, who 
had beheld the rise and splendor and eclipse of 
his astonishing career. To be the mouthpiece of 
a haughty and valiant people at one of the heroic 
crises of their history was his mission. His genius, 
his defects, mirror the genius and defects of his 
countrymen ; his glory, being a part of the glory 
of a whole race, is secure. That race, which 
Arpad led into the heart of Europe, showed, at 
Kossuth's summons, a thousand years later, that it 
had not lost the traits which had once distinguished 
it on the shores of Lake Baikal and along the 
upper waters of the Yenisei. 



GARIBALDI 

When men look back, two or three hundred 
years hence, upon the nineteenth century, it may 
well be that they will discern its salient character- 
istic to have been, not scientific, not inventive, as 
we popularly suppose, but romantic. Science will 
soon bury our present heaps of facts under larger 
accumulations, from the summit of which broader 
theories may be scanned ; to-morrow will make 
to-day's wonderful invention old-fashioned and in- 
sufficient : but the romance with which this later 
time has been charged will exercise an increasing 
fascination over poets and novelists and historians, 
as the years roll on. Oblivion swallows up mate- 
rial achievements, but great deeds never grow old. 
That many of our writers should not have heard 
this note of the age argues that they, rather than 
the age, are prosaic and commonplace. For to 
what other period shall we turn for a richer store 
of those vicissitudes and contrasts in fortune which 
make up the real romance, the profound tragedy, 
of life? Everywhere the dissolution of a society 
rooted in mediaeval traditions is accompanied by 



116 THRONE-MAKERS 

confusion and struggle, — the birth-pangs of a new- 
order. Classes whose separation seemed perma- 
nent are thrown together, and antagonistic ele- 
ments are strangely mixed ; there is strife, and 
doubt, and excess ; sudden combinations are sud- 
denly rent by discords ; anachronisms flourish side 
by side with innovations ; new institutions wear 
old names, and old abuses mask in new disguises. 

In such a crisis, two facts are prominent: the 
unusual range of activity offered to the individual 
— may he not traverse the whole scale of experi- 
ence ? — and the dependence of the individual 
upon himself. He rises, or he falls, by his own 
motion. The privileges of caste avail nothing ; 
for the very confusion produces a certain wild 
equality, whereby all start at the line, and the 
swiftest wins. Napoleon's maxim, La carrier e 
ouverte aux talents, is the motto of the century. 
Napoleon himself is an epochal illustration of the 
power of the individual to make the momentum of 
circumstances work for him. The Revolution, it 
is true, had harnessed the steeds ; but Napoleon 
dared to mount the chariot, grasped the reins, and 
drove over Europe, upsetting thrones and prince- 
doms and hierarchies. The haughty descendants 
of immemorial lineage gave place to the brothers 
and comrades of the " Corsican upstart." Murat, 
the son of a tavern-keeper ; Ney, a briefless law- 



GARIBALDI 117 

student ; Lannes, a dyer ; Soult, Massena, Ber- 
thier, Junot, soldiers of fortune ; and how many 
other children of the Third Estate, — laughed at 
the pretensions of humbled Bourbons, Hapsburgs, 
and Hohenzollerns ! Frequent reactions between 
revolution and restoration serve to emphasize the 
stress of this crisis ; and these contrasts in the 
conditions of men, revealing human character 
under the most diverse phases, show how inextri- 
cably the romantic and the tragic are interwoven 
in the average lot. 

Nor in Europe only has this spectacle been 
going forward. The United States also have wit- 
nessed similarly rapid transmutations, partly due 
to other causes. Within a generation we have 
seen a gigantic national upheaval: three millions 
of artisans, clerks, merchants, and lawyers were 
transformed by the magic of a drum-beat into 
soldiers ; and then, the conflict over, soldiers and 
uniforms vanished, and the labors of peace were 
resumed. 

Follow Abraham Lincoln from his Illinois log- 
cabin to the White House ; follow Grant from his 
tanyard to Appomattox, — and you can compute 
the sweep of Fortune's wheel. These careers were 
lived so near us that they hardly astonish us; 
they seem as natural as daylight ; and in truth 
they are as natural as that or any other every-day 



118 THRONE-MAKERS 

miracle. As if forgetful of these, we ransack the 
past, or fiction, or melodramas, for heroes to admire. 
To weak imaginations, distance still lends enchant- 
ment. 

Our age has produced one romantic man, how- 
ever, who had not to wait for the mellowing effects 
of time to be recognized as romantic. He enjoyed, 
almost from the outset of his career, the fame of a 
legendary hero, and he will, we cannot doubt, be a 
hero to posterity. Some future Tasso will find in 
his life a theme nobler than Godfrey's, too roman- 
tic in fact for either invention or myth to enhance 
it. He lived dramas as naturally as Shakespeare 
wrote them; the commonplace could not befall 
him. Looking at him from one side we might say, 
" Here is a Homeric hero, strangely transplanted 
from the Iliad into an era of railroads and tele- 
graphs ! " But if we fix our attention on other 
qualities, we discover in him a typical democrat, 
fit product of a democratic age. This man was 
Joseph Garibaldi, whose career alone would suffice 
to redeem the nineteenth century from the stigma 
of egotism and the rebuke of commonplaceness. 

Among all the political achievements of our 
century, none has more of noble charm than the 
redemption of Italy. Whether we look at the dif- 
ficulty of the undertaking, or at the careers of the 
leaders and the temper of the people who engaged 



GARIBALDI 119 

in it, we are alike allured and amazed. After 
the fall of the Eoman Empire, Italy had never 
been united under one government; nevertheless, 
from the time of Dante on, the aspiration towards 
national unity was kept burning in every patri- 
otic Italian heart. During the Middle Age, little 
republics won independence by overthrowing their 
feudal lords ; then they quarreled among them- 
selves ; and then they became the prey and appa- 
nage of a few strong families. The Bishop of 
Eome, forgetful of his spiritual mission, lusted 
after worldly power, established himself as a tem- 
poral sovereign, and elevated his cardinals into 
temporal princes. Foreign invaders — Normans, 
Spaniards, Germans, French — swept over the 
peninsula in successive waves ; bloodshed and pil- 
lage signalized their coming, corruption was the 
slime they left behind them. One by one, the 
refugees of independence were submerged in the 
flood of servitude ; until at last Venice herself, 
become merely the mummy of a republic, crum- 
bled to dust at Napoleon's touch. Napoleon pro- 
mised, but did not give, to Italy the unity or the 
freedom which she still dreamed of : he parceled 
her anew into duchies and kingdoms. By that act 
he broke down ancient barriers and opened a new 
prospect. Italians beheld the old order, which 
had so long oppressed them that many believed it 



120 THRONE-MAKERS 

must endure perpetually, suddenly dissolved, and 
in its stead a change, although not the change 
they longed for. Still, any change, in such cir- 
cumstances, implies fresh possibilities; and the 
Italians passed from a lethargy which had seemed 
hopelessly enthralling into a restless wakefulness. 

The twenty years of the reign of Force, of 
which Napoleon was the embodiment, ended at 
"Waterloo. Europe, exhausted, sank back into 
conservatism, and was ruled for thirty years by 
Craft, of which Metternich was the symbol. 1 The 
Congress of Vienna reimposed the past upon Italy. 
Monarchs and bureaucrats, like children who amuse 
themselves by " making believe " things are not as 
they are, would have it appear that the deluge of 
revolution, with all its mighty wrecks and subver- 
sions, had never been. The Pope was restored 
in the States of the Church ; the Bourbons ruled 
again in Naples and Sicily ; an Austrian was Arch- 
duke of Tuscany; Parma and Piacenza were as- 
signed to Napoleon's wife, Maria Louisa ; Venetia 
and Lombardy went as spoils to Austria ; an abso- 
lutist king reigned in Piedmont. Evidently the 
revolution had been but a summer thunderstorm, 

1 After Metternich, we have the period of Sham-Force, under 
Louis Napoleon ; and finally of Force again, under Bismarck. 
These four stages complete the cycle of European politics during 
the past century. 



GARIBALDI 121 

for the sun of despotism was shining once more. 
The sun shone ; but what of the sultry air ? What 
of the threatening clouds along the horizon ? Were 
these the fringe of the dispersing storm, or the 
portents of another ? Mutterings and rumblings, 
too, Carbonari plottings, and quickly extinguished 
flashes of insurrection, — did not these omens belie 
Diplomacy's pretense that the eighteenth century 
had- been happily resuscitated to exist forever? 

It was during this interval of reaction and 
relapse, when hope was stifled and energy slept ; 
when victorious despotism flattered itself with the 
belief that the Napoleonic episode had demon- 
strated the absurdity of Liberalism; when Met- 
ternich, the spider of Schonbrunn, was spinning 
his cobwebs of chicane across the path to liberty, 
— then it was that the generation which should 
live to see Italy free and united was getting 
what learning it could in the Jesuit-ridden schools. 
Of this generation the most romantic figure was 
Giuseppe Garibaldi. 

Joseph Garibaldi was born at Nice, July 4, 1807. 
His father was a fisherman, thrifty enough to have 
a small vessel of his own. Such stories as have 
come down to us of the boy's childhood show him 
to have been plucky, adventurous, and tender- 
hearted. He cried bitterly at having broken a 
grasshopper's leg ; he rescued, when only seven, a 



122 THRONE-MAKERS 

laundress from drowning ; he sailed off with some 
truant companions for Genoa, and might have 
vanished forever, had he not been overtaken near 
Monaco and brought home. His education was 
intrusted to two priests,- from whom, he says, he 
learned nothing ; then to a layman, Arena, who 
gave him a smattering of reading, arithmetic, and 
history. As he was quick at learning, his parents 
wished to make a lawyer or a priest of him ; but 
he had the rover's instinct and could not "resist the 
enticements of the sea. At length, when he was 
fourteen, his parents yielded, and he became a 
sailor. 

Of those early voyages, we need mention only 
one, which took him to Rome. Immense the im- 
pression the Holy City made on his imagination ! 
He saw not the Rome of the Caesars, nor the Rome 
of the Popes, — the city whose monuments entomb 
twenty-five centuries of history ; but, he says, " the 
Rome of the future, that Rome of which I have 
never despaired, — shipwrecked, at the point of 
death, buried in the depth of American forests ; 
the Rome of the regenerating idea of a great 
people ; the dominating . idea of whatever Past or 
Present could inspire in me, as it has been through 
all my life. Oh, Rome became then dear to me 
above all earthly existences. I adored her with all 
the fervor of my soul. In short, Rome for me is 



GARIBALDI 123 

Italy, and I see no Italy possible save in the union, 
compact or federate, of her scattered members. 
Kome is the symbol of united Italy, under what- 
ever form you will. And the most infernal work 
of the Papacy was that of keeping her morally 
and materially divided." x 

Thenceforth the young mariner, who rose rap- 
idly to be mate and master, could not rest for the 
thought of the Eternal City, and of the country 
his patriotism craved. During these years, he 
learned to take Fortune's buffets : he was captured 
by pirates, he lay ill and penniless for months at 
Constantinople, — adventures which in another 
career would demand more than passing notice, 
but which he deemed unimportant in comparison 
with a conversation he had with a young Ligurian, 
who unfolded to him the dreams of the Mazzi- 
nians. " Columbus did not experience so great a 
satisfaction at the discovery of America," says 
Garibaldi, " as I experienced at finding one who 
busied himself with the redemption of our father- 
land." 

Fatherland ! the name seemed a mockery to the 
Italians of that time. Italy, as Metternich phrased 
it, was only a geographical expression. Seven or 
eight petty princes, including the Pope, ruled the 
little patches into which the Peninsula was cut 

1 This was written in 1849. 



124 THRONE-MAKERS 

up. All the north, except Piedmont, was directly 
subject to a foreign despot, Austria ; while, indi- 
rectly, Austria domineered over Tuscany, Rome, 
and Naples. Piedmont had a native king, indeed, 
but Absolutism throve nowhere more vigorously 
than there. The Jesuits controlled the worship 
and education of the little kingdom ; reactionaries 
filled the ministerial offices, the army, and the gov- 
ernment bureaux; the sovereign himself, Charles 
Albert, believed devoutly in the divine right of 
kings, and held that it would be criminal in him, 
by granting his people more freedom, to lessen the 
responsibility imposed on him by God. Through- 
out the Peninsula, no one might discuss politics, 
whether in speech or writing. It was high trea- 
son to suggest representative government ; the sov- 
ereign's will was the only constitution. In some 
parts of the land, the very word Italy could not be 
used by actors on the stage ; and everywhere cen- 
sors kept watch to prevent the idea of a regenerate 
Italy from slipping into print. 

By foreigners, the Italians were more often de- 
spised than pitied ; they were believed to be pluck- 
less, wordy, deceitful creatures, who at best had 
their uses as singers, dancing-masters, and paint- 
ers' models. Among themselves, discord (born of 
ancestral feuds), envy (born of local ambitions, 
a love of haranguing, and a lack of leaders), had 



GARIBALDI 125 

thrice resulted in an abortive revolution. And 
now, just as the third attempt had failed, and in 
its failure had discredited the great organizations 
of conspiracy that had been for fifteen years 
the hope of Italian patriotism, Joseph Mazzini, a 
Genoese a year younger than Garibaldi, banished 
from Piedmont because he had a suspicious habit 
of walking abroad after dark, formed the new 
secret society of Young Italy which aimed at not 
only the political but the social and moral redemp- 
tion of his countrymen. Garibaldi, eager to hasten 
the emancipation of his country, joined Young 
Italy; but in the first plot in which he was en- 
gaged his confederates failed to appear at the 
appointed time, and he was forced to fly from 
Genoa for his life. "Here begins my public 
career," he says in his memoirs. 

After being twice captured and twice escaping, 
he made his way on foot, disguised as a peasant, 
to Marseilles, where, on opening a newspaper, the 
first thing he read was the sentence of death de- 
creed against him should he ever be caught in 
Piedmont. This was in February, 1834. Pro- 
scribed but not disheartened, when chance offered 
he resumed his seafaring. But mercantile voyages 
grew monotonous. Should he offer his services to 
the Bey of Tunis, who was seeking a European to 
take charge of his navy ? After hesitation, Gari- 



126 THRONE-MAKERS 

baldi decided " no." During a cholera epidemic, 
he volunteered as nurse in the Marseilles hospital. 
Finally he shipped for South America. Landing 
at Rio Janeiro, he fell in with another exile, Ros- 
setti, and for a while they kept a shop. Soon, 
however, more congenial occupation presented it- 
self. 

Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost province 
of Brazil, had revolted from the Empire and set 
up a republic, which it was struggling to maintain. 
Garibaldi, who could never resist aiding republi- 
cans, equipped a small privateer, on which he and 
Rossetti, with twelve companions, set sail for the 
south. This was the opening of a life of adven- 
ture which lasted twelve years, and which, could 
we trace it step by step, would be found a nonpa- 
reil of heroic deeds and startling dangers. The 
political and social condition of South America 
then resembled in lawlessness that period in Eu- 
ropean history when chivalry had its rise ; when, 
as a foil to the bullying and craft and greed of the 
many, stood out the courage and honor and cour- 
tesy of the few. Garibaldi, whether by sea or 
land, approved himself a peerless knight. Follow- 
ing him, we should witness now a battle of gun- 
boats far up the river Parana, until, his ammunition 
having given out, he loaded the cannon with the 
chain cables ; or, again, we should undergo the 



GARIBALDI 127 

horrors of a shipwreck near the mouth of La 
Plata, or join in a desperate battle against great 
odds at some lonely Paraguayan ranch ; we should 
traverse vast pampas, or thrid the solitude of 
trackless forests ; we should know hunger, thirst, 
and cold, and be incessantly attacking or attacked ; 
and we should realize that although these cam- 
paigns seem mere border forays when compared 
with the wars of modern Europe and the United 
States, yet they settled the fate of territories as 
large as France, and required those martial quali- 
ties which beget heroism in any crisis under any 
sky. 

Although we must pass all this, one marking 
episode in Garibaldi's life at that time ought not 
to be forgotten. His ships had been cast away in 
a storm. He succeeded in swimming to shore, but 
his dearest comrades perished. He felt lonely, 
dispirited, and though he was soon to command 
another cruiser, the excitements of war could no 
longer dissipate his melancholy. " In short," he 
says, in a characteristic passage of his Autobio- 
graphy, " I had need of a human being to love me 
immediately, — to have one near without whom ex- 
istence was growing intolerable to me. Although 
not old, I understood men well enough to know 
how hard it is to find a true friend. A woman ? 
Yes, a woman ; for I always deemed her the most 



128 THROXE-MAKERS 

perfect of creatures, and — whatever may be said 
— amongst women it is infinitely easier to find a 
loving heart. I was pacing the quarter-deck, ru- 
minating my dismal thoughts, and, after reasonings 
of all kinds, I decided finally to seek a woman, to 
draw me out of my tiresome and unbearable con- 
dition. I cast a casual glance towards the Barra : 
that was the name of a rather high hill at the 
entrance of the lagune, toward the south, on which 
were visible some simple and picturesque habita- 
tions. There, with the aid of the glass, I discov- 
ered a young woman. I had myself set ashore in 
her direction. I disembarked, and, going towards 
the house where was the object of my expedition, 
I had not reached her before I met a man of the 
place, whom I had known at the beginning of our 
stay. He asked me to take coffee in his house. 
We entered, and the first person who met my gaze 
was she whose appearance had caused me to come 
ashore. It was Anita, the mother of my sons, the 
companion of my life in good and evil fortune, — 
the woman whose courage I have so often envied. 
We both remained rapt and speechless, recipro- 
cally looking at each other, like two persons who 
do not meet for the first time, and who seek in the 
features one of the other something to assist recol- 
lection. At last I greeted her and said, 'Thou 
must be mine.' I spoke but little Portuguese, 



GARIBALDI 129 

and uttered these hardy words in Italian. How- 
ever, I was magnetic in my presumption. I had 
drawn a knot, sealed a compact, which death alone 
could break. " 

A few nights later Garibaldi carried Anita off 
to his ship, clandestinely as it appears, and they 
were wedded when they reached another port. 
She was a companion matching his ideal : she 
shared his wild fortunes and hardships ; she was 
an indefatigable horsewoman, a dead-shot, and 
upon occasion she could touch off a cannon. 

After years of fighting, Garibaldi obtained a 
furlough, gathered a drove of cattle, and journeyed 
across Uruguay to Montevideo. There he was 
reduced to teach the rudiments of arithmetic in a 
private school, picking up whatever other precari- 
ous pennies he could, until civil war broke out in 
Uruguay, and he enlisted on the side of the peo- 
ple, struggling to free themselves from a blood- 
thirsty dictator. Garibaldi's exploits as a guer- 
rilla and corsair had made him famous, and now 
he repeated at Montevideo his amazing feats. 
From among his countrymen he organized an 
" Italian Legion," which proved throughout a long 
service that Italians could and would fight, — two 
facts which scornful Europe was loth then to be- 
lieve. He also illustrated his perfect disinterested- 
ness by refusing all rewards beyond a bare means 



130 THRONE-MAKERS 

of subsistence. At a time when lie held the fate 
of Montevideo in his hand, he had not money to 
buy candles to light the poor room where he and 
his family were dwelling. 

Thus, giving his utmost for liberty and the wel- 
fare of strangers, he saw the years pass without 
bringing the one thing he desired most of all, — 
the chance to consecrate himself to the redemption 
of Italy. That desire, the ruling passion of his 
life, had followed him everywhere. I marvel that 
any materialists exist ; for where, in the material 
world, shall we find anything comparable to the 
tenacity of ideas ? Think not to preserve them by 
locking them in an iron safe ; write them not on 
stone, which crumbles, but on the human soul, and 
they shall be indestructible. Have we not daily 
proof that against remorse, love, hate, ambition, 
all the powers of the material world — fire or frost, 
hunger, disease, persecution — dash as harmless as 
vapor against adamant ? By the moral precepts, 
by which Moses awed his people three thousand 
years ago, we are awed. They are permanent, be- 
ing graven on something more durable than tables 
of stone ; and it matters not how many times old 
Nile is renewed, or whether Sinai itself wear in 
dust away. 

On Garibaldi's heart of hearts " Italy " was 
written, — an ideal which nothing could cancel. 



GARIBALDI 131 

At length, in the early autumn of 1846 news came 
to Montevideo that a Liberal Pope had been elected 
at Kome, that the word " amnesty " had been ut- 
tered, and that the Peninsula was throbbing with 
splendid hopes. Each succeeding message con- 
firmed the presentiment that the longed-for day 
of action was nigh. Garibaldi, subordinating his 
hatred of priestcraft to his patriotism, wrote to 
offer his sword to the new Pope, to whom all Ital- 
ians were looking as the leader of their crusade 
for freedom, but Pius never acknowledged the 
offer. Then Garibaldi and some threescore of the 
Legion hired a brigantine, which they named La 
Speranza (Hope), and on April 15, 1848, bade 
the Montevideans farewell. They had to touch at 
Santa Pola, on the coast of Spain, for water, where 
they learned that all Europe was in revolution, 
and then they dropped anchor at Nice on June 23. 
Over Garibaldi's head the death-sentence still 
hung, but he had nothing to fear, as the events of 
the past six months had wiped out old memories. 
Those six months had had no parallel in modern 
European history. They had witnessed the tri- 
umph of revolution from the Douro to the Don. 

Not even during the Napoleonic upheaval had 
modern Europe felt a convulsion like that of 1848 : 
for government and order were as necessary to 
Napoleon as to his victims, and his revolution was 



132 THRONE-MAKERS 

the effort of one lion to devour foxes and wolves, 
— of one preponderant tyranny to absorb many 
smaller tyrannies; but the catastrophe of 1848 
seemed, to anxious observers, to endanger civiliza- 
tion itself. Society was dissolving into its elements. 
The many-headed beast had risen, ubiquitous, ter- 
rific. Lop off: one head, and others grew from 
the trunk. What substitute could possibly be 
found in that chaos for the tottering system? 
Nothing seemed certain but anarchy. 

That was the year when sovereigns were sud- 
denly made acquainted with their lackeys' stair- 
cases and the back doors of their palaces. The 
Pope escaped from Eome in the livery of a foot- 
man. Ferdinand, Emperor of Austria, fled twice 
from Vienna. Louis Philippe, the " citizen king " 
of the French, put on a disguise, and slipped away 
to England. Metternich, rudely interrupted in 
his diplomatic game of chess, barely escaped with 
his life to London. The Crown Prince of Prus- 
sia, subsequently Emperor of Germany, eluded the 
angry Berliners, a trusty noble driving the car- 
riage in which he escaped. There was a scamper- 
ing of petty German princes, as of prairie-dogs 
at the sportsman's approach. Nobility, whose 
ambition hitherto had been to display itself, was 
now wondrously fond of burrows. And just as 
the frightened upholders of absolutism went into 



GARIBALDI 133 

hiding, the apostles of democracy emerged from 
prisons and exile. 

Paper constitutions, grandiloquent manifestoes, 
patriotic resolutions, doctrinaire pamphlets, were 
whirled hither and thither as thick as autumn 
leaves. Every man who had a tongue spoke ; 
speaking, so furious was the din, soon loudened 
into shouting. But the Old Regime was encamped 
in no Jericho whose walls would tumble at mere 
sound. There must be deeds as well as words; 
in truth, more action and less Babel had been 
wiser. Committees of national safety, working- 
men's unions, civic guards, armies of the people, 
sprang into existence, and it is wonderful to note 
with what quickness officers and leaders were 
found to command them. Universities were turned 
into recruiting stations and barracks ; students 
and professors became soldiers. There were he- 
roic combats, excesses, reverses bravely borne. 
Gradually the fatal lack of centre and organiza- 
tion could not be concealed. The leaders disputed 
as to measures ; then followed misunderstandings, 
jealousies, desertions. Each doctrinaire cared that 
his plan, rather than the general cause, should 
prevail. Each sect, each race, feared that it would 
lose should its rival take the lead. But the pur- 
pose of monarchy was everywhere the same, — to 
recover its footing ; and the agents of monarchy, 



134 THRONE-MAKERS 

cautiously creeping out of their retreats, began 
to profit by the divisions among their enemies. 
Within a year the European revolt was crushed. 
Nevertheless its lessons abide. It taught that 
despots cannot be permanently abolished so long 
as a large majority of a nation require despotic 
government, and the proof that they require it is 
the fact that they submit to it ; whence it follows 
that real democracy cannot conquer until a peo- 
ple be educated up to the capacity of governing 
themselves. It taught that without unity among 
the heads and obedience among the members no 
reform can succeed. It taught, finally, that no 
society which has once attained a certain level 
of civilization can exist in a state of anarchy ; for 
when anarchy is reached, the opportunity of the 
strongest man, the tyrant, offers, and the pro- 
cess of reconstruction from the basis of absolutism 
begins. 

To Liberals, in June, 1848, however, the days 
of tyranny seemed at an end ; the Golden Age of 
liberty, constitutional government, and the brother- 
hood of nations seemed to have dawned. Gari- 
baldi learned that Lombardy had expelled the 
Austrian s ; that Charles Albert, the Piedmontese 
King, had drawn his sword as the champion of 
Italian independence ; and that the Pope and the 
other princes, including even Bomba of Naples, 



GARIBALDI 135 

had espoused the national cause. The rapid vic- 
tories of the spring had been succeeded by military 
inertia; frantic enthusiasm had given place to a 
chatter of criticism ; but not even those who grum- 
bled loudest believed as yet that the cause was in 
danger. 

Garibaldi hurried to the King's headquarters, 
near Mantua. He was no lover of royalty, but he 
would support any king honestly fighting in behalf 
of Italy. Charles Albert granted him an audience, 
but avoided accepting his offered services, telling 
him that he had better consult the Minister of 
War, at Turin. To Turin, accordingly, Garibaldi 
posted back, saw that official, received further eva- 
sive replies, and departed angry. To have traveled 
seven thousand miles over sea to fight for his coun- 
try's redemption, only to be treated in this fashion, 
might well astound a blunt soldier who had sup- 
posed that every volunteer would be welcomed. 
In his own case the rebuff was peculiarly aston- 
ishing, for he was, presumably, an ally whom any 
commander would be glad to secure. Europe 
had rung with the fame of his South American 
career, and already regarded him as a legendary 
hero. Imagine Charlemagne refusing Eoland's 
aid in his campaign against the Paynims, or the 
old Romans turning coldly away from one of the 
great Twin Brethren ! 



136 THRONE-MAKERS 

Although Garibaldi would have despised rea- 
sons of state which deprived him of the right of 
volunteering against Austria, yet the King had to 
be governed by them. For his excuse in declaring 
war had been that, unless he interfered, anarchy, 
followed by a republic, would prevail in Lom- 
bardy. To be consistent, therefore, he had to 
keep clear of even an apparent league with repub- 
licanism as embodied in Garibaldi. 

Baffled and exasperated, but determined not 
to be cut off from all activity, Garibaldi went 
to Milan, where a provisional government with 
republican leanings still ruled. By it he and his 
legionaries were hospitably received, and sent out, 
with a considerable body of raw recruits, to harass 
the Austrians along the lakes. In a few weeks, 
however, the main Austrian army had reconquered 
Lombardy, and the Garibaldians were driven to 
take refuge across the Swiss frontier. 

Garibaldi, like a true knight-errant, now went 
forth in search of another chance to do battle for 
freedom. At Florence the republicans did him 
honor, but were wary of asking him to command 
their troops, the fact being that each district had 
leaders of its own, and a host of zealous aspirants, 
who were patriotically disinclined to make way for 
even the most distinguished knight-errant. At 
Rome, whence Pius IX had fled, the revolutionists 



GARIBALDI 137 

gave him a warmer greeting, and when, in Febru- 
ary, 1849, they set up a republic, — Garibaldi 
having made a motion to that effect in the Roman 
Assembly, — they made him second in command 
of their army. And now, properly speaking, the 
tale of Garibaldi's European exploits begins. 

We cannot follow in detail the story of the 
defense of Rome against the French troops sent 
thither by the perfidious Louis Napoleon, and their 
allies from Spain and Naples ; yet it were well 
worth our while to give an hour to deeds so bril- 
liant, so noble, so picturesque, — to pass from the 
Assembly Hall, where Mazzini, the indomitable 
dreamer, was the dictator, to the fortifications 
where band after band of volunteers, speaking 
many dialects, clothed in many costumes, were re- 
solved to give their lives for freedom ! We should 
see Lucian Manara, a modern knight, captain of 
a legion of brave men ; we should see Mameli, the 
blond poet-soldier, a mere lad ; and the brothers 
Dandolo, and Medici and Nino Bixio, and many 
another doomed to win renown by an early death 
there, or there to begin a career which became 
a necessary strand in Italy's regeneration. But, 
most conspicuous of all, we should see Garibaldi, 
for whom the legionaries and their leaders had 
such a feeling as the Knights of the Round Table 
for Arthur their King. Call it loyalty, 'tis not 



138 THRONE-MAKERS- 

enough ; call it filial affection, something remains 
unexpressed; call it fascination, enthusiasm, sor- 
cery, — each term helps the definition, though 
none singly suffices. His was, indeed, that eldest 
sorcery which binds the hearts of men to their 
hero, — that power which reveals itself as an ideal 
stronger than danger or hardship or disease, some- 
thing to worship, to love, to die for. 

During her five-and-twenty centuries, Rome had 
seen many strange captains, but none more original 
than this, her latest defender, from the pampas 
of South America. In person he was of middle 
stature ; his hair and beard were of a brown in- 
clining to red ; his eyes blue, more noteworthy for 
their expression than for their color ; his mouth, 
so far as it could be seen under the moustache, 
was firm, but capable of an irresistible smile. His 
soldiers, remembering his aspect in battle, spoke 
of his face as " leonine ; " women, caught perhaps 
by the charm rather than the cut of his features, 
thought him beautiful. And as if Nature had 
not done enough to mark her hero, he adopted on 
his return to Europe the dress which he had worn 
in South America, — a small, plumed cap, the gray- 
ish-white cloak or poncho lined with red, the red 
flannel shirt, the trousers and boots of the Uru- 
guayan herdsmen and guerrillas. 

During that siege of Eome, Europe came to 



GARIBALDI 139 

know Garibaldi and his red-shirted companions, 
who were equally bizarre in character and in 
costume, — a troop of poets, students, dreamers, 
vagabonds, and adventurers, — who, with the nu- 
cleus of the Legion from Montevideo, were capa- 
ble, under their chieftain's guidance, of splendid 
achievements. Their victories against the Neapo- 
litans at Palestrina and Velletri; their stubborn 
defense of Rome against the overwhelming armies 
of France ; their bravery at the Villa Pamfili ; 
their desperate struggle to hold the Vascello, where 
Manara was killed ; their unwilling but inevitable 
yielding of the outposts, and finally of the inner 
breastworks, — made up a tale of heroism which 
could be matched only at Venice in that year of 
waning revolution. 

But Europe had declared that there should be 
no republic at Rome, and after nine weeks' gal- 
lantry the city capitulated to the French, who 
represented the cause of reaction. Garibaldi, 
however, did not surrender. On the day when 
the French made their entry by one gate, he 
marched out of another, followed by nearly four 
thousand soldiers. He wound across the Cam- 
pagna, and then for twenty-nine days he led his 
troop among the Apennines, evading now the 
French who pressed on the rear, now the Austri- 
ans, who harassed both flanks and threatened to 



140 THRONE-MAKERS 

bar the advance. The little army dwindled, but 
Garibaldi held his purpose to reach Venice, where 
the Austrian tyrants had not yet forced their 
return. At length, however, in the little republic 
of San Marino he was surrounded. All but two 
hundred of his followers disbanded; with the 
remainder he eluded the enemy's cordon, reached 
the coast at Cesenatico, seized some fishing-boats, 
and embarked for Venice. Mid-voyage, a fleet of 
Austrian cruisers came upon them and opened 
fire. As best they could the fugitives landed, with 
Austrian pursuers at their heels. Garibaldi and 
one companion bore Anita in dying condition — 
she had followed the retreat on horseback all the 
way from Rome — to a wood-cutter's hut, where 
she died. A moment later Garibaldi had to fly. 

Of that retreat, and his subsequent hair-breadth 
escapes in being smuggled across Italy, he has left 
in his memoirs a thrilling account. For a second 
time he tasted the bitterness of exile : his first 
refuge was Genoa, but the Piedmontese govern- 
ment, timid after defeat, informed him that he 
must depart ; he was expelled from Turin at the 
instigation of the French; England warned him 
that he must be gone from Gibraltar within a 
week. Only in semi-savage Morocco did he at 
last find shelter ; thence, after a few months, he 
came to New York. Consider who it was that 



GARIBALDI 141 

Europe thus outlawed, and what was his crime. 
He was a man whose life had been a long devotion 
to human liberty, and whose most recent guilt was 
to have attempted to prevent foreign despots from 
reenslaving his countrymen. A system is judged 
by the men it persecutes. 

Wifeless, homeless, chagrined by the thought 
that Italy had waged her war of independence 
only to be beaten, Garibaldi began his second 
wanderings. A real Odyssey we may call it, 
with its strange happenings. For a year the hero 
of Rome earned a bare livelihood making candles 
in Meucci's factory on Staten Island ; then he 
shipped for Central and South America; cap- 
tained a cargo of guano from Lima to Canton, 
and a cargo of tea back to Lima ; brought a ship 
laden with copper, round Cape Horn to Boston ; 
and finally, in May, 1854, he dropped anchor at 
Genoa, where the government no longer feared 
his presence. With the proceeds of his mercan- 
tile ventures, he bought Caprera, — a mere rock, 
which juts out of the Tuscan Sea, near the north- 
ern tip of Sardinia. There, " like some tired eagle 
on a crag remote," he dwelt five years, apparently 
oblivious to the passing current of events, and 
wholly intent on coaxing a few vines and vegeta- 
bles to grow on his wind-swept rock. 

Early in 1859 a messenger summoned Garibaldi 



142 THRONE-MAKEKS 

from his hermitage to Turin. This summons was 
not unexpected. For months the world had re- 
garded war in Italy as inevitable, and now war 
was on the point of breaking out. 

How had this come to pass ? After her defeat in 
1849, Piedmont, the little northwestern kingdom of 
four million souls, had sturdily set about reform- 
ing herself. She stood firmly by the constitutional 
government adopted in 1848; she strengthened 
her army and her navy; she took education out 
of the hands of the Jesuits ; she encouraged com- 
merce, industry, and agriculture. Thus she proved 
to Europe that Italians could govern themselves 
by as good a political system as then existed ; to 
all the other Italians, groaning under Austrian, or 
Bourbon, or Papal tyranny, she proved that they 
might look to her to lead the Italian cause. 

This marvelous attainment was due primarily 
to Count Cavour, the statesman who, since 1850, 
had been almost continuously prime minister of 
Piedmont; and, in the second place, to Victor 
Emanuel, the shrewd, honest, chivalrous King, 
worthy to be the visible symbol of Italy's patri- 
otism. But Cavour had realized from the begin- 
ning that, however strong he might make Pied- 
mont, she would not be able singly to cope with 
Austria: four millions against thirty-five millions 
— the odds were too great ! So he labored to 



GARIBALDI 143 

bring Piedmont into the stream of European life ; 
he allied her to France and England in the Crimean 
War ; and now, at the beginning of 1859 he had 
persuaded Napoleon III to march the armies of 
France into Italy to join Piedmont in expelling 
the Austrians. 

All this had been brought about against great 
hindrances, not the least of which was the keeping 
in check the Italian conspirators. Since the days 
of the Carbonari, a certain number of Italians had 
hoped to set up a republic. Mazzini, now the 
chief leader of conspiracy, was uncompromisingly 
republican, holding so little faith in the methods 
of Cavour and the Constitutional Monarchists 
that he never hesitated to hatch plots against them 
as well as against the Austrians. Between these 
two irreconcilable parties Garibaldi was the link. 
By preference a republican, he yet recognized Vic- 
tor Emanuel as the only practicable standard- 
bearer, and he therefore fought loyally under him ; 
but he distrusted Cavour, scorned diplomacy, and 
abhorred Napoleon III. In his exuberant way, he 
insisted that Italians could, if they would, recover 
independence without begging the rogue, who had 
crushed Rome ten years before, to succor them. 

A volunteer corps, called the Hunters of the 
Alps, was accordingly organized, with the double 
purpose of using Garibaldi's skill as a guerrilla 



144 THRONE-MAKERS 

chieftain against the Austrians, and his unique 
popularity in drawing all sorts of partisans to 
support the national war. He suspected that the 
government was not wholly ingenuous ; he com- 
plained that his volunteers had to swallow many 
snubs from the regulars ; he chafed at being 
responsible to any superior : but the fact that he 
had at last a chance of striking the oppressors of 
Italy outweighed everything else. 

Despite the shortness of the war of 1859, Gari- 
baldi and his Hunters proved of real service in it. 
Varese, Como, remember their valor still; and 
had not Napoleon III suspended hostilities after 
the great victory of Solferino, the Garibaldians 
might have redeemed the Tyrol. But Napoleon's 
peace of Villafranca, while it gave Lombardy to 
Piedmont, left Venetia in the hands of the Aus- 
trians, and stopped further operations in the north 
at that time. During the autumn, however, Gari- 
baldi, with many of his volunteers, went to Tus- 
cany, where a provisional government was then 
awaiting the propitious moment for annexation 
to Victor Emanuel's kingdom. The situation was 
very ticklish, requiring careful diplomacy : Gari- 
baldi, who shared with General Fanti the military 
command, wished to have done with diplomacy, 
to call out one hundred thousand volunteers, and 
to rely on them to disentangle all complications. 



GARIBALDI 145 

Irritated at having his plan overruled, he resigned 
his command and withdrew to Caprera. 

Within three months, however, he was called 
from his retreat. Secret agents brought word 
that " something could be done " in Sicily, where 
for a long time Mazzinians had been preparing 
a revolt. It needed, they said, but Garibaldi's 
presence to redeem the island from Bourbon mis- 
rule. He could not resist the temptation. Trusty 
lieutenants of his had collected arms and ammu- 
nition, hired two steamers and enrolled volunteers. 
At Genoa, where these preparations were making, 
nobody, except the government officials, was igno- 
rant of their purpose. The government, however, 
pretended not to see. Cavour could not openly 
abet an expedition against a power with which 
Piedmont was not at war ; neither did he wish to 
hinder an expedition for whose success he and all 
Italian patriots prayed. So he discreetly closed 
his eyes. 

On the night of May 5, 1860, Garibaldi and 
1067 followers embarked on their two steamers 
near Genoa and vanished into the darkness. For 
a week thereafter Europe wondered whither they 
were bound, — whether against the Papal States or 
Naples ; then the telegraph reported that they had 
landed at Marsala, on the morning of May 11, just 
in time to escape two Neapolitan cruisers which 



146 THRONE-MAKERS 

had been watching for them. From that moment, 
day by day, with increasing astonishment, the 
world followed the progress of Garibaldi and his 
Thousand. No achievement like theirs has been 
chronicled in many centuries. They set out, a 
thousand filibusters, scantily equipped and un- 
drilled, to free an island of two and a half million 
inhabitants, an island guarded by an army fifty 
thousand strong, with forts and garrisons in all 
its ports, and having quick communication with 
Naples, where the Bourbon King had six million 
more subjects from whom to recruit his forces. 
Grant that the Sicilians fervently sympathized 
with Garibaldi, yet they were too wary to commit 
themselves before they had indications that he 
would win ; grant that the Bourbon troops were 
half-hearted and ludicrously superstitious, — many 
of them believed that the Garibaldians were wiz- 
ards, bullet-proof, — yet they had been trained to 
fight, they were well-armed, and by their numbers 
alone were formidable. That they would run away 
could not be assumed by the little band of libera- 
tors, any more than Childe Roland could suppose 
that the grim monsters who threatened his advance 
would vanish when he upon his slug-horn blew. 

And in truth the Bourbon soldiers did not run. 
At Calatifimi the Garibaldians beat them only 
after a fierce encounter ; at Palermo there was a 



GAEIBALDI 147 

desperate struggle ; at Milazzo, a resistance which 
might, if prolonged, have destroyed the expedi- 
tion. In every instance it seemed as if the Bour- 
bons might have won had they but displayed a 
little more nerve, another half hour's persistence ; 
but it was always the Garibaldians who had the 
precious reserve of pluck and strength to draw 
upon, and they always won. Their capture of 
Palermo, a walled city of two hundred thousand 
inhabitants, defended by many regiments on land 
and by men-of-war in the harbor, ranks highest 
among their exploits. Less than a month after 
quitting Genoa, they had liberated more than half 
the island and had set up a provisional govern- 
ment. By the first of August only two or three 
fortresses had not surrendered to them. 

And now questions of diplomacy came in to dis- 
turb the swift current of conquest. Garibaldi de- 
termined to cross to the mainland, redeem Naples, 
march on to Rome, and from the Capitol hail 
Victor Emanuel King of Italy. Cavour saw great 
danger in this plan. At any moment, a defeat 
would jeopard the positions already gained ; an 
attack on the Pope's domain would bring Louis 
Napoleon and Austria to his rescue, and might 
entail a war in which the just-formed Kingdom of 
Italy would be broken up; furthermore, Cavour 
believed that assimilation ought to keep pace with 



148 THRONE-MAKERS 

annexation. He knew that it would require long 
training to raise the Italians of the south, cor- 
rupted by ages of hideous misrule, to the level of 
their northern kinsmen. 

Such considerations as these could not, however, 
deter Garibaldi. He grew wroth at the thought 
that any foreigner — were he even the Emperor of 
the French — should be consulted by Italians in 
the achievement of their independence. Eluding 
both the Neapolitan and the Piedmontese cruisers, 
he crossed to the mainland and took Eeggio after 
a sharp fight. From that moment his progress 
towards the capital resembled a triumph. And 
when, on September 7, accompanied by only a few 
officers, he entered Naples, though there were still 
a dozen or more Bourbon regiments in garrison 
there, the soldiers joined with the civilians and the 
loud-throathed lazzaroni in acclaiming him their 
deliverer. Yet only a few hours before their King 
had sneaked off, too craven to defend himself, too 
much detested to be defended. Think what it 
meant that this should happen, — that the sover- 
eign, the source of honor, the fountain of justice, 
the symbol of the life and integrity of the state, 
should not find in his own palace one loyal sword 
unsheathed in his defense, even though the loyalty 
were hired, like that of the eight hundred Swiss 
who gave their lives for Louis XVI ! By an inev- 



GAEIBALDI 149 

itable penalty, Bourbon misrule in Naples passed 
vilely away ; it had been, as Gladstone declared, 
the embodied " negation of God : " even in its col- 
lapse and ruin there was nothing tragic, portend- 
ing strength ; there was only the negative energy 
of putrefaction. 

Having taken measures for temporarily govern- 
ing Naples, Garibaldi prepared for a last encounter 
with the Bourbons. King Francis still commanded 
an army of forty thousand men along the Vol- 
turno, near Capua. There Garibaldi, with hardly 
a third of that number, fought and won a pitched 
battle on October 1. A month later he welcomed 
Victor Emanuel as sovereign of the kingdom which 
he and his Thousand had liberated. The republi- 
cans, instigated by Mazzini, had wished to postpone, 
if they could not prevent, annexation ; but Gari- 
baldi, whose patriotic instinct was truer than their 
partisanship, insisted that Naples and Sicily should 
be united to the Kingdom of Italy under the House 
of Savoy. In all modern history there is no par- 
allel to his bestowal of his conquests on the King, 
as there is nothing nobler than his complete disin- 
terestedness. He declined all honors, titles, sti- 
pends, and offices for himself, and departed, almost 
secretly, from Naples for Caprera the day after he 
had consigned the government to its new lord. 

Fortune has one gift which she begrudges even 



150 THRONE-MAKERS 

to her darlings : she does not allow them to die at 
the summit of their career. Either too soon for 
their country's good, or too late for their pergonal 
fame, she sends death to dispatch them. Pericles, 
Cavour, Lincoln, were snatched away prematurely; 
Themistocles and Grant should have prayed to 
be released before they had slipped below their 
zenith. So, too, Garibaldi lacked nothing but 
that, after having redeemed a kingdom by one of 
the most splendid expeditions in history, and after 
having given it to the unifier of his fatherland, 
he should have vanished from the earth. Thanks 
to a kindlier fortune, the old Hebrew prophets 
were translated, and the Homeric heroes were 
borne off invisible, at the perfect moment. But 
while Garibaldi lacked this epic finale to his epic 
career, the closing decades of his life were as char- 
acteristic as any. 

In the spring of 1861 he reappeared on the 
scene at the opening of the first parliament of the 
Kingdom of Italy, to which he had been chosen 
deputy by many districts. He came, not jubilant 
but angry. Nice, his home, had been ceded to 
France in payment for French aid in the war of 
1859 : against Cavour, who had consented to this 
bargain, Garibaldi conceived the most intense ha- 
tred, and on the floor of the House he fulminated 
at the Prime Minister whose " treason had made 



GARIBALDI 151 

Garibaldi a foreigner in his native land." He 
complained, further, because the officers and sol- 
diers of the Garibaldian army had not been gener- 
ously treated by the government. The outburst 
was most deplorable. Many feared that the hero's 
testiness might lead to civil war ; and though the 
King arranged a meeting, in the hope of bringing 
about a reconciliation, Garibaldi went from it with 
bitterness in his heart. Six weeks later, on June 
6, Cavour, stricken by fever, died when his coun- 
try needed him most. Little did Garibaldi realize 
that in the great statesman's death he was losing 
the man who had been indispensable to his suc- 
cess •in Sicily, and whose judgment was needed to 
direct Garibaldian impulses to a fruitful end. 

Only Rome and Venetia now remained ununited 
to the Kingdom of Italy : in Rome a French gar- 
rison propped the Pope's despised temporal power ; 
in Yenetia the Austrian regiments held fast. To 
rescue the Italians still in bondage, and to com- 
plete the unification of Italy, were henceforth Gari- 
baldi's aims. He paid no heed to the diplomatic 
embarrassments which his schemes might create; 
for as usual he regarded diplomacy as a device by 
which cowards, knaves, and traitors thwarted the 
desires of patriots. 

In the summer of 1862, therefore, he recruited 
three or four thousand volunteers in Sicily, raised 



152 THRONE-MAKERS 

the war-cry, "Kome or death," crossed to the 
mainland, and had to be forcibly stopped by royal 
troops at Aspromonte. In the brief skirmish he 
was wounded, and for many months was confined 
at Varignano, whither flocked admirers — men, 
women, and youths — from all parts of Europe. 
There is no doubt that Rattazzi, then the premier, 
had connived at the expedition, hoping to repeat 
Cavour's master-stroke; but the conditions were! 
different from those of 1860, and the Premier but 
illustrated the truth that talent cannot even copy 
genius judiciously. Moreover, by allowing Gari- 
baldi to go so far and by then arresting him, Rat- 
tazzi subjected the government to a dangerous 
strain ; for Garibaldi's popularity was immense, 
and even those of his countrymen who insisted that 
no citizen — however distinguished his services — 
should be permitted to live above the law, and to 
wage war when he pleased, were as eager as he 
that Rome should be emancipated. 

Untaught by experience, Rattazzi connived at a 
similar expedition five years later. For several 
weeks Garibaldi went about openly preaching 
another crusade. When the French government 
asked for explanations, Rattazzi had . Garibaldi 
arrested and escorted to Caprera. A dozen men- 
of-war sailed round and round the rock, forbidding 
any one to approach or quit it. But one night 



GARIBALDI 153 

Garibaldi escaped in a tiny wherry, and a few 
days later he led a band of crusaders across the 
Papal frontier. They met the French troops at 
Mentana, were worsted and dispersed; and again 
Garibaldi was locked up in the fortress of Vari- 
gnano, while one party denounced the government 
for ingratitude towards the beloved hero, and an- 
other denounced it for treating him as a privileged 
person who might, when the impulse seized him, 
embroil the country in war. If we regard the ac- 
quirement of the methods of constitutional gov- 
ernment and of respect for law and order as the 
chief need of the Italians at that time, we can 
only regret the agitation and expeditions which 
Garibaldi conducted, to the detriment of his coun- 
try's progress. 

Meanwhile, in 1866, Venetia had been restored 
to her kinsfolk, as the result of the brief conflict 
in which Italy and Prussia allied themselves against 
Austria. Garibaldi organized another corps of 
Hunters of the Alps, but the shortness of the 
campaign prevented him, as in 1859, from going 
far. In 1870 the war between France and Prussia 
enabled the Italians to take possession of Kome 
as soon as the French garrison was withdrawn ; so 
that Italy owed the completion of her unity, not to 
her own sword, but to a lucky turn in the quarrels 
of her neighbors. 



154 THRONE-MAKERS 

No sooner had the French Empire collapsed, 
and the French Republic was seen to be terribly 
beset by the Germans, than Garibaldi offered his 
services to her. He was assigned to the command 
of the Army of the Vosges, a nondescript corps, 
which more than once gave proof of bravery, 
although it could not match the superior numbers 
and discipline of Moltke's men. The French gave 
him scanty thanks for his services, and at the end 
of the war he returned home. 

During the next ten years he was either at 
Rome, arraigning the government, the fallen Pa- 
pacy, and the wastefulness of the monarchy ; or 
he was making triumphal progresses through the 
land, sure everywhere of being treated as an idol ; 
or he stayed in his Caprera hermitage, inditing 
letters in behalf of political extremists, Nihilists, 
fanatics. Yet his popularity did not wane; his 
countrymen regarded him more than ever as a 
privileged person, whose senile extravagances were 
not to be taken too seriously. They loved his in- 
tentions ; they revered him for the achievements 
of his prime ; and when, on June 2, 1882, he fell 
asleep in his Caprera home, all Italy put on mourn- 
ing, and the world, conscious that it had lost a 
hero, grieved. 

On his sixty-fifth birthday (July 4, 1872) he 
drew his own portrait thus : " A tempestuous life, 



GARIBALDI 155 

composed of good and of evil, as I believe of the 
large part of the world. A consciousness of hav- 
ing sought the good always, for me and for my 
kind. If I have sometimes done wrong, certainly 
I did it involuntarily. A hater of tyranny and 
falsehood, with the profound conviction that in 
them is the principal origin of the ills and of the 
corruption of the human race. Hence a republi- 
can, this being the system of honest folk, the 
normal system, willed by the majority, and con- 
sequently not imposed with violence and with 
imposture. Tolerant and not exclusive, incapable 
of imposing my republicanism by force, on the 
English, for instance, if they are contented with 
the government of Queen Victoria. And, however 
contented they may be, their government should 
be considered republican. A republican, but ever- 
more persuaded of the necessity of an honest and 
temporary dictatorship at the head of those nations 
which, like France, Spain, and Italy, are the vic- 
tims of a most pernicious Byzantinism. ... I was 
copious in praises of the dead, fallen on fields of 
battle for liberty. I praised less the living, espe- 
cially my comrades. When I felt myself urged by 
just rancor against those who wronged me, I strove 
to placate my resentment before speaking of the 
offense and of the offender. In every writing of 
mine, I have always attacked clericalism, more 



118 THRONE-MAKERS 

miracle. As if forgetful of these, we ransack the 
past, or fiction, or melodramas, for heroes to admire. 
To weak imaginations, distance still lends enchant- 
ment. 

Our age has produced one romantic man, how- 
ever, who had not to wait for the mellowing effects 
of time to be recognized as romantic. He enjoyed, 
almost from the outset of his career, the fame of a 
legendary hero, and he will, we cannot doubt, be a 
hero to posterity. Some future Tasso will find in 
his life a theme nobler than Godfrey's, too roman- 
tic in fact for either invention or myth to enhance 
it. He lived dramas as naturally as Shakespeare 
wrote them; the commonplace could not befall 
him. Looking at him from one side we might say, 
" Here is a Homeric hero, strangely transplanted 
from the Iliad into an era of railroads and tele- 
graphs ! " But if we fix our attention on other 
qualities, we discover in him a typical democrat, 
fit product of a democratic age. This man was 
Joseph Garibaldi, whose career alone would suffice 
to redeem the nineteenth century from the stigma 
of egotism and the rebuke of commonplaceness. 

Among all the political achievements of our 
century, none has more of noble charm than the 
redemption of Italy. "Whether we look at the dif- 
ficulty of the undertaking, or at the careers of the 
leaders and the temper of the people who engaged 



GARIBALDI 119 

in it, we are alike allured and amazed. After 
the fall of the Roman Empire, Italy had never 
been united under one government; nevertheless, 
from the time of Dante on, the aspiration towards 
national unity was kept burning in every patri- 
otic Italian heart. During the Middle Age, little 
republics won independence by overthrowing their 
feudal lords ; then they quarreled among them- 
selves ; and then they became the prey and appa- 
nage of a few strong families. The Bishop of 
Eome, forgetful of his spiritual mission, lusted 
after worldly power, established himself as a tem- 
poral sovereign, and elevated his cardinals into 
temporal princes. Foreign invaders — Normans, 
Spaniards, Germans, French — swept over the 
peninsula in successive waves ; bloodshed and pil- 
lage signalized their coming, corruption was the 
slime they left behind them. One by one, the 
refugees of independence were submerged in the 
flood of servitude ; until at last Venice herself, 
become merely the mummy of a republic, crum- 
bled to dust at Napoleon's touch. Napoleon pro- 
mised, but did not give, to Italy the unity or the 
freedom which she still dreamed of : he parceled 
her anew into duchies and kingdoms. By that act 
he broke down ancient barriers and opened a new 
prospect. Italians beheld the old order, which 
had so long oppressed them that many believed it 



120 THRONE-MAKERS 

must endure perpetually, suddenly dissolved, and 
in its stead a change, although not the change 
they longed for. Still, any change, in such cir- 
cumstances, implies fresh possibilities; and the 
Italians passed from a lethargy which had seemed 
hopelessly enthralling into a restless wakefulness. 

The twenty years of the reign of Force, of 
which Napoleon was the embodiment, ended at 
Waterloo. Europe, exhausted, sank back into 
conservatism, and was ruled for thirty years by 
Craft, of which Metternich was the symbol. 1 The 
Congress of Vienna reimposed the past upon Italy. 
Monarchs and bureaucrats, like children who amuse 
themselves by " making believe " things are not as 
they are, would have it appear that the deluge of 
revolution, with all its mighty wrecks and subver- 
sions, had never been. The Pope was restored 
in the States of the Church ; the Bourbons ruled 
again in Naples and Sicily ; an Austrian was Arch- 
duke of Tuscany; Parma and Piacenza were as- 
signed to Napoleon's wife, Maria Louisa ; Yenetia 
and Lombardy went as spoils to Austria ; an abso- 
lutist king reigned in Piedmont. Evidently the 
revolution had been but a summer thunderstorm, 

1 After Metternich, we have the period of Sham-Foree, under 
Louis Napoleon ; and finally of Force again, under Bismarck. 
These four stages complete the cycle of European politics during 1 
the past century. 



GARIBALDI 121 

for the sun of despotism was shining once more. 
The sun shone ; but what of the sultry air ? What 
of the threatening clouds along the horizon ? Were 
these the fringe of the dispersing storm, or the 
portents of another ? Mutterings and rumblings, 
too, Carbonari plottings, and quickly extinguished 
flashes of insurrection, — did not these omens belie 
Diplomacy's pretense that the eighteenth century 
had- been happily resuscitated to exist forever? 

It was during this interval of reaction and 
relapse, when hope was stifled and energy slept ; 
when victorious despotism flattered itself with the 
belief that the Napoleonic episode had demon- 
strated the absurdity of Liberalism; when Met- 
ternich, the spider of Schonbrunn, was spinning 
his cobwebs of chicane across the path to liberty, 
— then it was that the generation which should 
live to see Italy free and united was getting 
what learning it could in the Jesuit-ridden schools. 
Of this generation the most romantic figure was 
Giuseppe Garibaldi. 

Joseph Garibaldi was born at Nice, July 4, 1807. 
His father was a fisherman, thrifty enough to have 
a small vessel of his own. Such stories as have 
come down to us of the boy's childhood show him 
to have been plucky, adventurous, and tender- 
hearted. He cried bitterly at having broken a 
grasshopper's leg ; he rescued, when only seven, a 



122 THRONE-MAKERS 

laundress from drowning ; he sailed off with some 
truant companions for Genoa, and might have 
vanished forever, had he not been overtaken near 
Monaco and brought home. His education was 
intrusted to two priests,- from whom, he says, he 
learned nothing ; then to a layman, Arena, who 
gave him a smattering of reading, arithmetic, and 
history. As he was quick at learning, his parents 
wished to make a lawyer or a priest of him ; but 
he had the rover's instinct and could not ^resist the 
enticements of the sea. At length, when he was 
fourteen, his parents yielded, and he became a 
sailor. 

Of those early voyages, we need mention only 
one, which took him to Rome. Immense the im- 
pression the Holy City made on his imagination ! 
He saw not the Rome of the Caesars, nor the Rome 
of the Popes, — the city whose monuments entomb 
twenty-five centuries of history ; but, he says, " the 
Rome of the future, that Rome of which I have 
never despaired, — shipwrecked, at the point of 
death, buried in the depth of American forests ; 
the Rome of the regenerating idea of a great 
people ; the dominating . idea of whatever Past or 
Present could inspire in me, as it has been through 
all my life. Oh, Rome became then dear to me 
above all earthly existences. I adored her with all 
the fervor of my soul. In short, Rome for me is 



GARIBALDI 123 

Italy, and I see no Italy possible save in the union, 
compact or federate, of her scattered members. 
Eome is the symbol of united Italy, under what- 
ever form you will. And the most infernal work 
of the Papacy was that of keeping her morally 
and materially divided." x 

Thenceforth the young mariner, who rose rap- 
idly to be mate and master, could not rest for the 
thought of the Eternal City, and of the country 
his patriotism craved. During these years, he 
learned to take Fortune's buffets : he was captured 
by pirates, he lay ill and penniless for months at 
Constantinople, — adventures which in another 
career would demand more than passing notice, 
but which he deemed unimportant in comparison 
with a conversation he had with a young Ligurian, 
who unfolded to him the dreams of the Mazzi- 
nians. " Columbus did not experience so great a 
satisfaction at the discovery of America," says 
Garibaldi, " as I experienced at finding one who 
busied himself with the redemption of our father- 
land." 

Fatherland ! the name seemed a mockery to the 
Italians of that time. Italy, as Metternich phrased 
it, was only a geographical expression. Seven or 
eight petty princes, including the Pope, ruled the 
little patches into which the Peninsula was cut 

1 This was written in 1849. 



124 THRONE-MAKERS 

up. All the north, except Piedmont, was directly- 
subject to a foreign despot, Austria ; while, indi- 
rectly, Austria domineered over Tuscany, Rome, 
and Naples. Piedmont had a native king, indeed, 
but Absolutism throve nowhere more vigorously 
than there. The Jesuits controlled the worship 
and education of the little kingdom ; reactionaries 
filled the ministerial offices, the army, and the gov- 
ernment bureaux ; the sovereign hiniself , Charles 
Albert, believed devoutly in the divine right of 
kings, and held that it would be criminal in him, 
by granting his people more freedom, to lessen the 
responsibility imposed on him by God. Through- 
out the Peninsula, no one might discuss politics, 
whether in speech or writing. It was high trea- 
son to suggest representative government ; the sov- 
ereign's will was the only constitution. In some 
parts of the land, the very word Italy could not be 
used by actors on the stage ; and everywhere cen- 
sors kept watch to prevent the idea of a regenerate 
Italy from slipping into print. 

By foreigners, the Italians were more often de- 
spised than pitied ; they were believed to be pluck- 
less, wordy, deceitful creatures, who at best had 
their uses as singers, dancing-masters, and paint- 
ers' models. Among themselves, discord (born of 
ancestral feuds), envy (born of local ambitions, 
a love of haranguing, and a lack of leaders), had 



GARIBALDI 125 

thrice resulted in an abortive revolution. And 
now, just as the third attempt had failed, and in 
its failure had discredited the great organizations 
of conspiracy that had been for fifteen years 
the hope of Italian patriotism, Joseph Mazzini, a 
Genoese a year younger than Garibaldi, banished 
from Piedmont because he had a suspicious habit 
of walking abroad after dark, formed the new 
secret society of Young Italy which aimed at not 
only the political but the social and moral redemp- 
tion of his countrymen. Garibaldi, eager to hasten 
the emancipation of his country, joined Young 
Italy; but in the first plot in which he was en- 
gaged his confederates failed to appear at the 
appointed time, and he was forced to fly from 
Genoa for his life. "Here begins my public 
career," he says in his memoirs. 

After being twice captured and twice escaping, 
he made his way on foot, disguised as a peasant, 
to Marseilles, where, on opening a newspaper, the 
first thing he read was the sentence of death de- 
creed against him should he ever be caught in 
Piedmont. This was in February, 1834. Pro- 
scribed but not disheartened, when chance offered 
he resumed his seafaring. But mercantile voyages 
grew monotonous. Should he offer his services to 
the Bey of Tunis, who was seeking a European to 
take charge of his navy ? After hesitation, Gari- 



126 THRONE-MAKERS 

baldi decided "no." During a cholera epidemic, 
he volunteered as nurse in the Marseilles hospital. 
Finally he shipped for South America. Landing 
at Eio Janeiro, he fell in with another exile, Ros- 
setti, and for a while they kept a shop. Soon, 
however, more congenial occupation presented it- 
self. 

Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost province 
of Brazil, had revolted from the Empire and set 
up a republic, which it was struggling to maintain. 
Garibaldi, who could never resist aiding republi- 
cans, equipped a small privateer, on which he and 
Rossetti, with twelve companions, set sail for the 
south. This was the opening of a life of adven- 
ture which lasted twelve years, and which, could 
we trace it step by step, would be found a nonpa- 
reil of heroic deeds and startling dangers. The 
political and social condition of South America 
then resembled in lawlessness that period in Eu- 
ropean history when chivalry had its rise ; when, 
as a foil to the bullying and craft and greed of the 
many, stood out the courage and honor and cour- 
tesy of the few. Garibaldi, whether by sea or 
land, approved himself a peerless knight. Follow- 
ing him, we should witness now a battle of gun- 
boats far up the river Parana, until, his ammunition 
having given out, he loaded the cannon with the 
chain cables ; or, again, we should undergo the 



GARIBALDI 127 

horrors of a shipwreck near the mouth of La 
Plata, or join in a desperate battle against great 
odds at some lonely Paraguayan ranch ; we should 
traverse vast pampas, or thrid the solitude of 
trackless forests ; we should know hunger, thirst, 
and cold, and be incessantly attacking or attacked ; 
and we should realize that although these cam- 
paigns seem mere border forays when compared 
with the wars of modern Europe and the United 
States, yet they settled the fate of territories as 
large as France, and required those martial quali- 
ties which beget heroism in any crisis under any 
sky. 

Although we must pass all this, one marking 
episode in Garibaldi's life at that time ought not 
to be forgotten. His ships had been cast away in 
a storm. He succeeded in swimming to shore, but 
his dearest comrades perished. He felt lonely, 
dispirited, and though he was soon to command 
another cruiser, the excitements of war could no 
longer dissipate his melancholy. " In short," he 
says, in a characteristic passage of his Autobio- 
graphy, " I had need of a human being to love me 
immediately, — to have one near without whom ex- 
istence was growing intolerable to me. Although 
not old, I understood men well enough to know 
how hard it is to find a true friend. A woman ? 
Yes, a woman ; for I always deemed her the most 



128 THROXE-MAKERS 

perfect of creatures, and — whatever may be said 
— amongst women it is infinitely easier to find a 
loving heart. I was pacing the quarter-deck, ru- 
minating my dismal thoughts, and, after reasonings 
of all kinds, I decided finally to seek a woman, to 
draw me out of my tiresome and unbearable con- 
dition. I cast a casual glance towards the Barra : 
that was the name of a rather high hill at the 
entrance of the lagune, toward the south, on which 
were visible some simple and picturesque habita- 
tions. There, with the aid of the glass, I discov- 
ered a young woman. I had myself set ashore in 
her direction. I disembarked, and, going towards 
the house where was the object of my expedition, 
I had not reached her before I met a man of the 
place, whom I had known at the beginning of our 
stay. He asked me to take coffee in his house. 
We entered, and the first person who met my gaze 
was she whose appearance had caused me to come 
ashore. It was Anita, the mother of my sons, the 
companion of my life in good and evil fortune, — 
the woman whose courage I have so often envied. 
We both remained rapt and speechless, recipro- 
cally looking at each other, like two persons who 
do not meet for the first time, and who seek in the 
features one of the other something to assist recol- 
lection. At last I greeted her and said, 'Thou 
must be mine.' I spoke but little Portuguese, 



GARIBALDI 129 

and uttered these hardy words in Italian. How- 
ever, I was magnetic in my presumption. I had 
drawn a knot, sealed a compact, which death alone 
could break. ,, 

A few nights later Garibaldi carried Anita off 
to his ship, clandestinely as it appears, and they 
were wedded when they reached another port. 
She was a companion matching his ideal : she 
shared his wild fortunes and hardships ; she was 
an indefatigable horsewoman, a dead-shot, and 
upon occasion she could touch off a cannon. 

After years of fighting, Garibaldi obtained a 
furlough, gathered a drove of cattle, and journeyed 
across Uruguay to Montevideo. There he was 
reduced to teach the rudiments of arithmetic in a 
private school, picking up whatever other precari- 
ous pennies he could, until civil war broke out in 
Uruguay, and he enlisted on the side of the peo- 
ple, struggling to free themselves from a blood- 
thirsty dictator. Garibaldi's exploits as a guer- 
rilla and corsair had made him famous, and now 
he repeated at Montevideo his amazing feats. 
From among his countrymen he organized an 
" Italian Legion," which proved throughout a long 
service that Italians could and would fight, — two 
facts which scornful Europe was loth then to be- 
lieve. He also illustrated his perfect disinterested- 
ness by refusing all rewards beyond a bare means 



130 THRONE-MAKERS 

of subsistence. At a time when lie held the fate 
of Montevideo in his hand, he had not money to 
buy candles to light the poor room where he and 
his family were dwelling. 

Thus, giving his utmost for liberty and the wel- 
fare of strangers, he saw the years pass without 
bringing the one thing he desired most of all, — 
the chance to consecrate himself to the redemption 
of Italy. That desire, the ruling passion of his 
life, had followed him everywhere. I marvel that 
any materialists exist ; for where, in the material 
world, shall we find anything comparable to the 
tenacity of ideas ? Think not to preserve them by 
locking them in an iron safe ; write them not on 
stone, which crumbles, but on the human soul, and 
they shall be indestructible. Have we not daily 
proof that against remorse, love, hate, ambition, 
all the powers of the material world — fire or frost, 
hunger, disease, persecution — dash as harmless as 
vapor against adamant ? By the moral precepts, 
by which Moses awed his people three thousand 
years ago, we are awed. They are permanent, be- 
ing graven on something more durable than tables 
of stone ; and it matters not how many times old 
Nile is renewed, or whether Sinai itself wear in 
dust away. 

On Garibaldi's heart of hearts " Italy " was 
written, — an ideal which nothing could cancel. 



GARIBALDI 131 

At length, in the early autumn of 1846 news came 
to Montevideo that a Liberal Pope had been elected 
at Rome, that the word " amnesty " had been ut- 
tered, and that the Peninsula was throbbing with 
splendid hopes. Each succeeding message con- 
firmed the presentiment that the longed-for day 
of action was nigh. Garibaldi, subordinating his 
hatred of priestcraft to his patriotism, wrote to 
offer his sword to the new Pope, to whom all Ital- 
ians were looking as the leader of their crusade 
for freedom, but Pius never acknowledged the 
offer. Then Garibaldi and some threescore of the 
Legion hired a brigantine, which they named La 
Speranza (Hope), and on April 15, 1848, bade 
the Montevideans farewell. They had to touch at 
Santa Pola, on the coast of Spain, for water, where 
they learned that all Europe was in revolution, 
and then they dropped anchor at Nice on June 23. 
Over Garibaldi's head the death-sentence still 
hung, but he had nothing to fear, as the events of 
the past six months had wiped out old memories. 
Those six months had had no parallel in modern 
European history. They had witnessed the tri- 
umph of revolution from the Douro to the Don. 

Not even during the Napoleonic upheaval had 
modern Europe felt a convulsion like that of 1848 : 
for government and order were as necessary to 
Napoleon as to his victims, and his revolution was 



132 THRONE-MAKERS 

the effort of one lion to devour foxes and wolves, 
— of one preponderant tyranny to absorb many 
smaller tyrannies; but the catastrophe of 1848 
seemed, to anxious observers, to endanger civiliza- 
tion itself. Society was dissolving into its elements. 
The many-headed beast had risen, ubiquitous, ter- 
rific. Lop off one head, and others grew from 
the trunk. What substitute could possibly be 
found in that chaos for the tottering system? 
Nothing seemed certain but anarchy. 

That was the year when sovereigns were sud- 
denly made acquainted with their lackeys' stair- 
cases and the back doors of their palaces. The 
Pope escaped from Rome in the livery of a foot- 
man. Ferdinand, Emperor of Austria, fled twice 
from Vienna. Louis Philippe, the "citizen king" 
of the French, put on a disguise, and slipped away 
to England. Metternich, rudely interrupted in 
his diplomatic game of chess, barely escaped with 
his life to London. The Crown Prince of Prus- 
sia, subsequently Emperor of Germany, eluded the 
angry Berliners, a trusty noble driving the car- 
riage in which he escaped. There was a scamper- 
ing of petty German princes, as of prairie-dogs 
at the sportsman's approach. Nobility, whose 
ambition hitherto had been to display itself, was 
now wondrously fond of burrows. And just as 
the frightened upholders of absolutism went into 



GARIBALDI 133 

hiding, the apostles of democracy emerged from 
prisons and exile. 

Paper constitutions, grandiloquent manifestoes, 
patriotic resolutions, doctrinaire pamphlets, were 
whirled hither and thither as thick as autumn 
leaves. Every man who had a tongue spoke ; 
speaking, so furious was the din, soon loudened 
into shouting. But the Old Kegime was encamped 
in no Jericho whose walls would tumble at mere 
sound. There must be deeds as well as words; 
in truth, more action and less Babel had been 
wiser. Committees of national safety, working- 
men's unions, civic guards, armies of the people, 
sprang into existence, and it is wonderful to note 
with what quickness officers and leaders were 
found to command them. Universities were turned 
into recruiting stations and barracks ; students 
and professors became soldiers. There were he- 
roic combats, excesses, reverses bravely borne. 
Gradually the fatal lack of centre and organiza- 
tion could not be concealed. The leaders disputed 
as to measures ; then followed misunderstandings, 
jealousies, desertions. Each doctrinaire cared that 
his plan, rather than the general cause, should 
prevail. Each sect, each race, feared that it would 
lose should its rival take the lead. But the pur- 
pose of monarchy was everywhere the same, — to 
recover its footing ; and the agents of monarchy, 



134 THRONE-MAKERS 

cautiously creeping out of their retreats, began 
to profit by the divisions among their enemies. 
Within a year the European revolt was crushed. 
Nevertheless its lessons abide. It taught that 
despots cannot be permanently abolished so long 
as a large majority of a nation require despotic 
government, and the proof that they require it is 
the fact that they submit to it ; whence it follows 
that real democracy cannot conquer until a peo- 
ple be educated up to the capacity of governing 
themselves. It taught that without unity among 
the heads and obedience among the members no 
reform can succeed. It taught, finally, that no 
society which has once attained a certain level 
of civilization can exist in a state of anarchy ; for 
when anarchy is reached, the opportunity of the 
strongest man, the tyrant, offers, and the pro- 
cess of reconstruction from the basis of absolutism 
begins. 

To Liberals, in June, 1848, however, the days 
of tyranny seemed at an end ; the Golden Age of 
liberty, constitutional government, and the brother- 
hood of nations seemed to have dawned. Gari- 
baldi learned that Lombardy had expelled the 
Austrians ; that Charles Albert, the Piedmontese 
King, had drawn his sword as the champion of 
Italian independence ; and that the Pope and the 
other princes, including even Bomba of Naples, 



GARIBALDI 135 

had espoused the national cause. The rapid vic- 
tories of the spring had been succeeded by military 
inertia; frantic enthusiasm had given place to a 
chatter of criticism ; but not even those who grum- 
bled loudest believed as yet that the cause was in 
danger. 

Garibaldi hurried to the King's headquarters, 
near Mantua. He was no lover of royalty, but he 
would support any king honestly fighting in behalf 
of Italy. Charles Albert granted him an audience, 
but avoided accepting his offered services, telling 
him that he had better consult the Minister of 
War, at Turin. To Turin, accordingly, Garibaldi 
posted back, saw that official, received further eva- 
sive replies, and departed angry. To have traveled 
seven thousand miles over sea to fight for his coun- 
try's redemption, only to be treated in this fashion, 
might well astound a blunt soldier who had sup- 
posed that every volunteer would be welcomed. 
In his own case the rebuff was peculiarly aston- 
ishing, for he was, presumably, an ally whom any 
commander would be glad to secure. Europe 
had rung with the fame of his South American 
career, and already regarded him as a legendary 
hero. Imagine Charlemagne refusing Eoland's 
aid in his campaign against the Paynims, or the 
old Komans turning coldly away from one of the 
great Twin Brethren ! 



136 THRONE-MAKERS 

Although Garibaldi would have despised rea- 
sons of state which deprived him of the right of 
volunteering against Austria, yet the King had to 
be governed by them. For his excuse in declaring 
war had been that, unless he interfered, anarchy, 
followed by a republic, would prevail in Lom- 
bardy. To be consistent, therefore, he had to 
keep clear of even an apparent league with repub- 
licanism as embodied in Garibaldi. 

Baffled and exasperated, but determined not 
to be cut off from all activity, Garibaldi went 
to Milan, where a provisional government with 
republican leanings still ruled. By it he and his 
legionaries were hospitably received, and sent out, 
with a considerable body of raw recruits, to harass 
the Austrians along the lakes. In a few weeks, 
however, the main Austrian army had reconquered 
Lombardy, and the Garibaldians were driven to 
take refuge across the Swiss frontier. 

Garibaldi, like a true knight-errant, now went 
forth in search of another chance to do battle for 
freedom. At Florence the republicans did him 
honor, but were wary of asking him to command 
their troops, the fact being that each district had 
leaders of its own, and a host of zealous aspirants, 
who were patriotically disinclined to make way for 
even the most distinguished knight-errant. At 
Eome, whence Pius IX had fled, the revolutionists 



GARIBALDI 137 

gave him a warmer greeting, and when, in Febru- 
ary, 1849, they set up a republic, — Garibaldi 
having made a motion to that effect in the Koman 
Assembly, — they made him second in command 
of their army. And now, properly speaking, the 
tale of Garibaldi's European exploits begins. 

We cannot follow in detail the story of the 
defense of Kome against the French troops sent 
thither by the perfidious Louis Napoleon, and their 
allies from Spain and Naples ; yet it were well 
worth our while to give an hour to deeds so bril- 
liant, so noble, so picturesque, — to pass from the 
Assembly Hall, where Mazzini, the indomitable 
dreamer, was the dictator, to the fortifications 
where band after band of volunteers, speaking 
many dialects, clothed in many costumes, were re- 
solved to give their lives for freedom ! We should 
see Lucian Manara, a modern knight, captain of 
a legion of brave men ; we should see Mameli, the 
blond poet-soldier, a mere lad ; and the brothers 
Dandolo, and Medici and Nino Bixio, and many 
another doomed to win renown by an early death 
there, or there to begin a career which became 
a necessary strand in Italy's regeneration. But, 
most conspicuous of all, we should see Garibaldi, 
for whom the legionaries and their leaders had 
such a feeling as the Knights of the Round Table 
for Arthur their King. Call it loyalty, 'tis not 



138 THRONE-MAKERS- 

enough ; call it filial affection, something remains 
unexpressed; call it fascination, enthusiasm, sor- 
cery, — each term helps the definition, though 
none singly suffices. His was, indeed, that eldest 
sorcery which binds the hearts of men to their 
hero, — that power which reveals itself as an ideal 
stronger than danger or hardship or disease, some- 
thing to worship, to love, to die for. 

During her five-and-twenty centuries, Rome had 
seen many strange captains, but none more original 
than this, her latest defender, from the pampas 
of South America. In person he was of middle 
stature ; his hair and beard were of a brown in- 
clining to red ; his eyes blue, more noteworthy for 
their expression than for their color ; his mouth, 
so far as it could be seen under the moustache, 
was firm, but capable of an irresistible smile. His 
soldiers, remembering his aspect in battle, spoke 
of his face as " leonine ; " women, caught perhaps 
by the charm rather than the cut of his features, 
thought him beautiful. And as if Nature had 
not done enough to mark her hero, he adopted on 
his return to Europe the dress which he had worn 
in South America, — a small, plumed cap, the gray- 
ish-white cloak or poncho lined with red, the red 
flannel shirt, the trousers and boots of the Uru- 
guayan herdsmen and guerrillas. 

During that siege of Rome, Europe came to 



GARIBALDI 139 

know Garibaldi and his red-shirted companions, 
who were equally bizarre in character and in 
costume, — a troop of poets, students, dreamers, 
vagabonds, and adventurers, — who, with the nu- 
cleus of the Legion from Montevideo, were capa- 
ble, under their chieftain's guidance, of splendid 
achievements. Their victories against the Neapo- 
litans at Palestrina and Velletri ; their stubborn 
defense of Rome against the overwhelming armies 
of France ; their bravery at the Villa Pamfili ; 
their desperate struggle to hold the Vascello, where 
Manara was killed ; their unwilling but inevitable 
yielding of the outposts, and finally of the inner 
breastworks, — made up a tale of heroism which 
could be matched only at Venice in that year of 
waning revolution. 

But Europe had declared that there should be 
no republic at Rome, and after nine weeks' gal- 
lantry the city capitulated to the French, who 
represented the cause of reaction. Garibaldi, 
however, did not surrender. On the day when 
the French made their entry by one gate, he 
marched out of another, followed by nearly four 
thousand soldiers. He wound across the Cam- 
pagna, and then for twenty-nine days he led his 
troop among the Apennines, evading now the 
French who pressed on the rear, now the Austri- 
ans, who harassed both flanks and threatened to 



140 THRONE-MAKERS 

bar the advance. The little army dwindled, but 
Garibaldi held his purpose to reach Venice, where 
the Austrian tyrants had not yet forced their 
return. At length, however, in the little republic 
of San Marino he was surrounded. All but two 
hundred of his followers disbanded; with the 
remainder he eluded the enemy's cordon, reached 
the coast at Cesenatico, seized some fishing-boats, 
and embarked for Venice. Mid-voyage, a fleet of 
Austrian cruisers came upon them and opened 
fire. As best they could the fugitives landed, with 
Austrian pursuers at their heels. Garibaldi and 
one companion bore Anita in dying condition — 
she had followed the retreat on horseback all the 
way from Rome — to a wood-cutter's hut, where 
she died. A moment later Garibaldi had to fly. 

Of that retreat, and his subsequent hair-breadth 
escapes in being smuggled across Italy, he has left 
in his memoirs a thrilling account. For a second 
time he tasted the bitterness of exile: his first 
refuge was Genoa, but the Piedmontese govern- 
ment, timid after defeat, informed him that he 
must depart ; he was expelled from Turin at the 
instigation of the French; England warned him 
that he must be gone from Gibraltar within a 
week. Only in semi-savage Morocco did he at 
last find shelter ; thence, after a few months, he 
came to New York. Consider who it was that 



GARIBALDI 141 

Europe thus outlawed, and what was his crime. 
He was a man whose life had been a long devotion 
to human liberty, and whose most recent guilt was 
to have attempted to prevent foreign despots from 
reenslaving his countrymen. A system is judged 
by the men it persecutes. 

Wifeless, homeless, chagrined by the thought 
that Italy had waged her war of independence 
only to be beaten, Garibaldi began his second 
wanderings. A real Odyssey we may call it, 
with its strange happenings. For a year the hero 
of Rome earned a bare livelihood making candles 
in Meucci's factory on Staten Island ; then he 
shipped for Central and South America; cap- 
tained a cargo of guano from Lima to Canton, 
and a cargo of tea back to Lima ; brought a ship 
laden with copper, round Cape Horn to Boston ; 
and finally, in May, 1854, he dropped anchor at 
Genoa, where the government no longer feared 
his presence. With the proceeds of his mercan- 
tile ventures, he bought Caprera, — a mere rock, 
which juts out of the Tuscan Sea, near the north- 
ern tip of Sardinia. There, " like some tired eagle 
on a crag remote," he dwelt five years, apparently 
oblivious to the passing current of events, and 
wholly intent on coaxing a few vines and vegeta- 
bles to grow on his wind-swept rock. 

Early in 1859 a messenger summoned Garibaldi 



142 THRONE-MAKERS 

from his hermitage to Turin. This summons was 
not unexpected. For months the world had re- 
garded war in Italy as inevitable, and now war 
was on the point of breaking out. 

How had this come to pass ? After her defeat in 
1849, Piedmont, the little northwestern kingdom of 
four million souls, had sturdily set about reform- 
ing herself. She stood firmly by the constitutional 
government adopted in 1848; she strengthened 
her army and her navy; she took education out 
of the hands of the Jesuits ; she encouraged com- 
merce, industry, and agriculture. Thus she proved 
to Europe that Italians could govern themselves 
by as good a political system as then existed ; to 
all the other Italians, groaning under Austrian, or 
Bourbon, or Papal tyranny, she proved that they 
might look to her to lead the Italian cause. 

This marvelous attainment was due primarily 
to Count Cavour, the statesman who, since 1850, 
had been almost continuously prime minister of 
Piedmont ; and, in the second place, to Victor 
Emanuel, the shrewd, honest, chivalrous King, 
worthy to be the visible symbol of Italy's patri- 
otism. But Cavour had realized from the begin- 
ning that, however strong he might make Pied- 
mont, she would not be able singly to cope with 
Austria: four millions against thirty-five millions 
— the odds were too great ! So he labored to 



GARIBALDI 143 

bring Piedmont into the stream of European life ; 
he allied her to France and England in the Crimean 
War ; and now, at the beginning of 1859 he had 
persuaded Napoleon III to march the armies of 
France into Italy to join Piedmont in expelling 
the Austrians. 

All this had been brought about against great 
hindrances, not the least of which was the keeping 
in check the Italian conspirators. Since the days 
of the Carbonari, a certain number of Italians had 
hoped to set up a republic. Mazzini, now the 
chief leader of conspiracy, was uncompromisingly 
republican, holding so little faith in the methods 
of Cavour and the Constitutional Monarchists 
that he never hesitated to hatch plots against them 
as well as against the Austrians. Between these 
two irreconcilable parties Garibaldi was the link. 
By preference a republican, he yet recognized Vic- 
tor Emanuel as the only practicable standard- 
bearer, and he therefore fought loyally under him ; 
but he distrusted Cavour, scorned diplomacy, and 
abhorred Napoleon III. In his exuberant way, he 
insisted that Italians could, if they would, recover 
independence without begging the rogue, who had 
crushed Rome ten years before, to succor them. 

A volunteer corps, called the Hunters of the 
Alps, was accordingly organized, with the double 
purpose of using Garibaldi's skill as a guerrilla 



144 THRONE-MAKERS 

chieftain against the Austrians, and his unique 
popularity in drawing all sorts of partisans to 
support the national war. He suspected that the 
government was not wholly ingenuous ; he com- 
plained that his volunteers had to swallow many 
snubs from the regulars; he chafed at being 
responsible to any superior : but the fact that he 
had at last a chance of striking the oppressors of 
Italy outweighed everything else. 

Despite the shortness of the war of 1859, Gari- 
baldi and his Hunters proved of real service in it. 
Varese, Como, remember their valor still; and 
had not Napoleon III suspended hostilities after 
the great victory of Solferino, the Garibaldians 
might have redeemed the Tyrol. But Napoleon's 
peace of Villafranca, while it gave Lombardy to 
Piedmont, left Venetia in the hands of the Aus- 
trians, and stopped further operations in the north 
at that time. During the autumn, however, Gari- 
baldi, with many of his volunteers, went to Tus- 
cany, where a provisional government was then 
awaiting the propitious moment for annexation 
to Victor Emanuel's kingdom. The situation was 
very ticklish, requiring careful diplomacy : Gari- 
baldi, who shared with General Fanti the military 
command, wished to have done with diplomacy, 
to call out one hundred thousand volunteers, and 
to rely on them to disentangle all complications. 



GARIBALDI 145 

Irritated at having his plan overruled, he resigned 
his command and withdrew to Caprera. 

Within three months, however, he was called 
from his retreat. Secret agents brought word 
that " something could be done " in Sicily, where 
for a long time Mazzinians had been preparing 
a revolt. It needed, they said, but Garibaldi's 
presence to redeem the island from Bourbon mis- 
rule. He could not resist the temptation. Trusty 
lieutenants of his had collected arms and ammu- 
nition, hired two steamers and enrolled volunteers. 
At Genoa, where these preparations were making, 
nobody, except the government officials, was igno- 
rant of their purpose. The government, however, 
pretended not to see. Cavour could not openly 
abet an expedition against a power with which 
Piedmont was not at war ; neither did he wish to 
hinder an expedition for whose success he and all 
Italian patriots prayed. So he discreetly closed 
his eyes. 

On the night of May 5, 1860, Garibaldi and 
1067 followers embarked on their two steamers 
near Genoa and vanished into the darkness. For 
a week thereafter Europe wondered whither they 
were bound, — whether against the Papal States or 
Naples ; then the telegraph reported that they had 
landed at Marsala, on the morning of May 11, just 
in time to escape two Neapolitan cruisers which 



146 THKONE-MAKERS 

had been watching for them. From that moment, 
day by day, with increasing astonishment, the 
world followed the progress of Garibaldi and his 
Thousand. No achievement like theirs has been 
chronicled in many centuries. They set out, a 
thousand filibusters, scantily equipped and un- 
drilled, to free an island of two and a half million 
inhabitants, an island guarded by an army fifty 
thousand strong, with forts and garrisons in all 
its ports, and having quick communication with 
Naples, where the Bourbon King had six million 
more subjects from whom to recruit his forces. 
Grant that the Sicilians fervently sympathized 
with Garibaldi, yet they were too wary to commit 
themselves before they had indications that he 
would win ; grant that the Bourbon troops were 
half-hearted and ludicrously superstitious, — many 
of them believed that the Garibaldians were wiz- 
ards, bullet-proof, — yet they had been trained to 
fight, they were well-armed, and by their numbers 
alone were formidable. That they would run away 
could not be assumed by the little band of libera- 
tors, any more than Childe Roland could suppose 
that the grim monsters who threatened his advance 
would vanish when he upon his slug-horn blew. 

And in truth the Bourbon soldiers did not run. 
At Calatifimi the Garibaldians beat them only 
after a fierce encounter ; at Palermo there was a 



GARIBALDI 147 

desperate struggle ; at Milazzo, a resistance which 
might, if prolonged, have destroyed the expedi- 
tion. In every instance it seemed as if the Bour- 
bons might have won had they but displayed a 
little more nerve, another half hour's persistence ; 
but it was always the Garibaldians who had the 
precious reserve of pluck and strength to draw 
upon, and they always won. Their capture of 
Palermo, a walled city of two hundred thousand 
inhabitants, defended by many regiments on land 
and by men-of-war in the harbor, ranks highest 
among their exploits. Less than a month after 
quitting Genoa, they had liberated more than half 
the island and had set up a provisional govern- 
ment. By the first of August only two or three 
fortresses had not surrendered to them. 

And now questions of diplomacy came in to dis- 
turb the swift current of conquest. Garibaldi de- 
termined to cross to the mainland, redeem Naples, 
march on to Rome, and from the Capitol hail 
Victor Emanuel King of Italy. Cavour saw great 
danger in this plan. At any moment, a defeat 
would jeopard the positions already gained ; an 
attack on the Pope's domain would bring Louis 
Napoleon and Austria to his rescue, and might 
entail a war in which the just-formed Kingdom of 
Italy would be broken up; furthermore, Cavour 
believed that assimilation ought to keep pace with 



148 THRONE-MAKERS 

annexation. He knew that it would require long 
training to raise the Italians of the south, cor- 
rupted by ages of hideous misrule, to the level of 
their northern kinsmen. 

Such considerations as these could not, however, 
deter Garibaldi. He grew wroth at the thought 
that any foreigner — were he even the Emperor of 
the French — should be consulted by Italians in 
the achievement of their independence. Eluding 
both the Neapolitan and the Piedmontese cruisers, 
he crossed to the mainland and took Reggio after 
a sharp fight. From that moment his progress 
towards the capital resembled a triumph. And 
when, on September 7, accompanied by only a few 
officers, he entered Naples, though there were still 
a dozen or more Bourbon regiments in garrison 
there, the soldiers joined with the civilians and the 
loud-throathed lazzaroni in acclaiming him their 
deliverer. Yet only a few hours before their King 
had sneaked off, too craven to defend himself, too 
much detested to be defended. Think what it 
meant that this should happen, — that the sover- 
eign, the source of honor, the fountain of justice, 
the symbol of the life and integrity of the state, 
should not find in his own palace one loyal sword 
unsheathed in his defense, even though the loyalty 
were hired, like that of the eight hundred Swiss 
who gave their lives for Louis XVI ! By an inev- 



GAEIBALDI 149 

itable penalty, Bourbon misrule in Naples passed 
vilely away ; it had been, as Gladstone declared, 
the embodied " negation of God : " even in its col- 
lapse and ruin there was nothing tragic, portend- 
ing strength; there was only the negative energy 
of putrefaction. 

Having taken measures for temporarily govern- 
ing Naples, Garibaldi prepared for a last encounter 
with the Bourbons. King Francis still commanded 
an army of forty thousand men along the Vol- 
turno, near Capua. There Garibaldi, with hardly 
a third of that number, fought and won a pitched 
battle on October 1. A month later he welcomed 
Victor Emanuel as sovereign of the kingdom which 
he and his Thousand had liberated. The republi- 
cans, instigated by Mazzini, had wished to postpone, 
if they could not prevent, annexation ; but Gari- 
baldi, whose patriotic instinct was truer than their 
partisanship, insisted that Naples and Sicily should 
be united to the Kingdom of Italy under the House 
of Savoy. In all modern history there is no par- 
allel to his bestowal of his conquests on the King, 
as there is nothing nobler than his complete disin- 
terestedness. He declined all honors, titles, sti- 
pends, and offices for himself, and departed, almost 
secretly, from Naples for Caprera the day after he 
had consigned the government to its new lord. 

Fortune has one gift which she begrudges even 



150 THRONE-MAKERS 

to her darlings : she does not allow them to die at 
the summit of their career. Either too soon for 
their country's good, or too late for their personal 
fame, she sends death to dispatch them. Pericles, 
Cavour, Lincoln, were snatched away prematurely; 
Themistocles and Grant should have prayed to 
be released before they had slipped below their 
zenith. So, too, Garibaldi lacked nothing but 
that, after having redeemed a kingdom by one of 
the most splendid expeditions in history, and after 
having given it to the unifier of his fatherland, 
he should have vanished from the earth. Thanks 
to a kindlier fortune, the old Hebrew prophets 
were translated, and the Homeric heroes were 
borne off invisible, at the perfect moment. But 
while Garibaldi lacked this epic finale to his epic 
career, the closing decades of his life were as char- 
acteristic as any. 

In the spring of 1861 he reappeared on the 
scene at the opening of the first parliament of the 
Kingdom of Italy, to which he had been chosen 
deputy by many districts. He came, not jubilant 
but angry. Nice, his home, had been ceded to 
France in payment for French aid in the war of 
1859 : against Cavour, who had consented to this 
bargain, Garibaldi conceived the most intense ha- 
tred, and on the floor of the House he fulminated 
at the Prime Minister whose " treason had made 



GARIBALDI 151 

Garibaldi a foreigner in his native land." He 
complained, further, because the officers and sol- 
diers of the Garibaldian army had not been gener- 
ously treated by the government. The outburst 
was most deplorable. Many feared that the hero's 
testiness might lead to civil war ; and though the 
King arranged a meeting, in the hope of bringing 
about a reconciliation, Garibaldi went from it with 
bitterness in his heart. Six weeks later, on June 
6, Cavour, stricken by fever, died when his coun- 
try needed him most. Little did Garibaldi realize 
that in the great statesman's death he was losing 
the man who had been indispensable to his suc- 
cess in Sicily, and whose judgment was needed to 
direct Garibaldian impulses to a fruitful end. 

Only Rome and Yenetia now remained ununited 
to the Kingdom of Italy : in Rome a French gar- 
rison propped the Pope's despised temporal power ; 
in Yenetia the Austrian regiments held fast. To 
rescue the Italians still in bondage, and to com- 
plete the unification of Italy, were henceforth Gari- 
baldi's aims. He paid no heed to the diplomatic 
embarrassments which his schemes might create ; 
for as usual he regarded diplomacy as a device by 
which cowards, knaves, and traitors thwarted the 
desires of patriots. 

In the summer of 1862, therefore, he recruited 
three or four thousand volunteers in Sicily, raised 



152 THRONE-MAKERS 

the war-cry, "Kome or death," crossed to the 
mainland, and had to be forcibly stopped by royal 
troops at Aspromonte. In the brief skirmish he 
was wounded, and for many months was confined 
at Varignano, whither flocked admirers — men, 
women, and youths — from all parts of Europe. 
There is no doubt that Rattazzi, then the premier, 
had connived at the expedition, hoping to repeat 
Cavour's master-stroke; but the conditions were/ 
different from those of 1860, and the Premier but 
illustrated the truth that talent cannot even copy 
genius judiciously. Moreover, by allowing Gari- 
baldi to go so far and by then arresting him, Rat- 
tazzi subjected the government to a dangerous 
strain ; for Garibaldi's popularity was immense, 
and even those of his countrymen who insisted that 
no citizen — however distinguished his services — 
should be permitted to live above the law, and to 
wage war when he pleased, were as eager as he 
that Rome should be emancipated. 

Untaught by experience, Rattazzi connived at a 
similar expedition five years later. For several 
weeks Garibaldi went about openly preaching 
another crusade. When the French government 
asked for explanations, Rattazzi had Garibaldi 
arrested and escorted to Caprera. A dozen men- 
of-war sailed round and round the rock, forbidding 
any one to approach or quit it. But one night 



GARIBALDI 153 

Garibaldi escaped in a tiny wherry, and a few 
days later he led a band of crusaders across the 
Papal frontier. They met the French troops at 
Mentana, were worsted and dispersed; and again 
Garibaldi was locked up in the fortress of Vari- 
gnano, while one party denounced the government 
for ingratitude towards the beloved hero, and an- 
other denounced it for treating him as a privileged 
person who might, when the impulse seized him, 
embroil the country in war. If we regard the ac- 
quirement of the methods of constitutional gov- 
ernment and of respect for law and order as the 
chief need of the Italians at that time, we can 
only regret the agitation and expeditions which 
Garibaldi conducted, to the detriment of his coun- 
try's progress. 

Meanwhile, in 1866, Venetia had been restored 
to her kinsfolk, as the result of the brief conflict 
in which Italy and Prussia allied themselves against 
Austria. Garibaldi organized another corps of 
Hunters of the Alps, but the shortness of the 
campaign prevented him, as in 1859, from going 
far. In 1870 the war between France and Prussia 
enabled the Italians to take possession of Rome 
as soon as the French garrison was withdrawn ; so 
that Italy owed the completion of her unity, not to 
her own sword, but to a lucky turn in the quarrels 
of her neighbors. 



154 THRONE-MAKERS 

No sooner had the French Empire collapsed, 
and the French Republic was seen to be terribly 
beset by the Germans, than Garibaldi offered his 
services to her. He was assigned to the command 
of the Army of the Vosges, a nondescript corps, 
which more than once gave proof of bravery, 
although it could not match the superior numbers 
and discipline of Moltke's men. The French gave 
him scanty thanks for his services, and at the end 
of the war he returned home. 

During the next ten years he was either at 
Rome, arraigning the government, the fallen Pa- 
pacy, and the wastefulness of the monarchy ; or 
he was making triumphal progresses through the 
land, sure everywhere of being treated as an idol ; 
or he stayed in his Caprera hermitage, inditing 
letters in behalf of political extremists, Nihilists, 
fanatics. Yet his popularity did not wane; his 
countrymen regarded him more than ever as a 
privileged person, whose senile extravagances were 
not to be taken too seriously. They loved his in- 
tentions; they revered him for the achievements 
of his prime ; and when, on June 2, 1882, he fell 
asleep in his Caprera home, all Italy put on mourn- 
ing, and the world, conscious that it had lost a 
hero, grieved. 

On his sixty-fifth birthday (July 4, 1872) he 
drew his own portrait thus : "A tempestuous life, 



GARIBALDI 155 

composed of good and of evil, as I believe of the 
large part of the world. A consciousness of hav- 
ing sought the good always, for me and for my 
kind. If I have sometimes done wrong, certainly 
I did it involuntarily. A hater of tyranny and 
falsehood, with the profound conviction that in 
them is the principal origin of the ills and of the 
corruption of the human race. Hence a republi- 
can, this being the system of honest folk, the 
normal system, willed by the majority, and con- 
sequently not imposed with violence and with 
imposture. Tolerant and not exclusive, incapable 
of imposing my republicanism by force, on the 
English, for instance, if they are contented with 
the government of Queen Victoria. And, however 
contented they may be, their government should 
be considered republican. A republican, but ever- 
more persuaded of the necessity of an honest and 
temporary dictatorship at the head of those nations 
which, like France, Spain, and Italy, are the vic- 
tims of a most pernicious Byzantinism. ... I was 
copious in praises of the dead, fallen on fields of 
battle for liberty. I praised less the living, espe- 
cially my comrades. When I felt myself urged by 
just rancor against those who wronged me, I strove 
to placate my resentment before speaking of the 
offense and of the offender. In every writing of 
mine, I have always attacked clericalism, more 



156 THRONE-MAKERS 

particularly because in it I have always believed 
that I found the prop o£ every despotism, of every 
vice, of every corruption. The priest is the per- 
sonification of lies, the liar is a thief, the thief is 
a murderer, — and I could find for the priest a 
series of infamous corollaries." 

Thus he read his own character, and we need 
not subject it to a searching analysis. In action lay 
his strength. He trusted instinct against any ar- 
gument. Hence the single-minded zeal with which 
he plunged into every enterprise; hence, too, his 
inability to weigh other policies than his own, and 
his distrust, often intensified into unreasoning pre- 
judice, of those who differed from him. If his 
kindly, generous nature often made him the dupe 
of schemers, the wonder is that they did not be- 
guile him into irreparable excesses. He was saved 
partly by a thread of common sense and partly by 
self-respect akin to vanity, which kept him con- 
stantly on the alert against being used as a tool. 
Although modest, he knew so well the grandeur of 
the part he was playing that he took no pains to 
dissemble the childlike delight he felt at demon- 
strations of his popularity. The lifelong champion 
of democracy, he behaved, in practice, as autocrat- 
ically as Cromwell ; a believer in dictatorships, 
never able to work successfully as yoke-fellow or 
subordinate to any one else. Like the dreamers, he 



GARIBALDI 157 

could not comprehend that human society, being 
a growth and not a manufacture, cannot be sud- 
denly lifted by benevolent manifesto or patriotic 
resolution. He scorned parliamentary debates, he 
reviled diplomacy, he underrated counsel. 

But what he had, he had superlatively : valor, 
presence of mind, geniality, unselfishness, mag- 
nanimity, — he had all these, the qualities of a 
popular soldier, to a degree which made whoever 
fought with him worship him. No other man of 
his time, nor perhaps of any time, inspired so 
many human beings with personal affection — as 
distinguished from that devotion which other fa- 
vorite captains have inspired — as he did. Every 
one of his soldiers felt that in Garibaldi he had 
not merely a commander but a brother; every 
person who approached him acknowledged his 
fascination. 

Strip off Garibaldi's eccentricities, look into his 
heart, contemplate his achievements, — we behold 
a hero of the Homeric brood. Again we enter the 
presence of a man of a few elemental traits, whose 
habit it was to exhibit his passions without that 
reserve which belongs to our sophisticated age. 
Like Achilles, he wept when he was moved, he 
sulked when he was angry. Equally simple was 
the mainspring of his action. He obeyed two 
ideals, and those two of the noblest, — love of 



158 THRONE-MAKERS 

liberty and love of his fellow-men : nay, more, he 
obeyed them as quickly when they led into exile, 
poverty, and danger as when they led him to a 
conquest unparalleled in modern history, and to 
fame in which the wonder and the affection of 
the world blended in equal parts. 

In the making of Italy it was his mission to 
rouse some of his countrymen to a sense of their 
patriotic duty, and to lead others to fight for a 
nation under Victor Emanuel instead of for a fac- 
tion under Mazzini. Through him, the forces of 
royalism and of revolution formed an alliance 
which, although it was almost indispensable to the 
success of the Italian cause, might never, but for 
him, have been formed. 

Such was Garibaldi, his character, his exploits. 
Shall we not seek also for the meaning of his 
career ? Shall we not ask, " To what attributes of 
general human nature had his individuality the 
key?" That conquest of Sicily was but an epi- 
sode ; long anterior to it was built up the tempera- 
ment which might have liberated twenty Sicilies, 
and which found a multitude ready to respond to 
its least signal. 

More than half of our nature is emotion. Men 
may lie sluggish, they may seem sodden in selfish- 
ness, or they may fritter their force away on petty 
things. But let the hero come, — the Garibaldi, 



GARIBALDI 159 

the embodied emotion, — and they will know him 
as light knows light, or lover his beloved. What 
just now seemed a dead, sordid mass is tinder, is 
flame. The craven legions, bewitched and trans- 
formed by his example, will follow him anywhere, 
were it to storm the gates of hell ! The immense 
scope of noble emotion, — is not that the signif- 
icance, if we seek it, of Garibaldi's marvelous 
influence ? And has it ever been more certainly 
displayed than in our very century, miscalled pro- 
saic ? 



PORTRAITS 



CARLYLE 

De. Samuel Johnson, during a long life, cher- 
ished an aversion, Platonic rather than militant, 
for Scotland and the Scotch. Had any one told 
him that out of the land where oats were fed to 
men there should issue, soon after his death, a 
master of romance, an incomparable singer, and a 
historian without rival, we can well imagine the 
emphasis with which he would have said, "Tut! 
tut ! sir, that is impossible ! " Nevertheless, for 
the best part of a century Scotland has shed her 
influence through the world in the genius of 
Walter Scott, Robert Burns, and Thomas Carlyle ; 
and she has taken sweet vengeance on the burly 
Doctor himself by creating in James Boswell not 
only the best of British biographers, but one so 
far the best that no other can be named worthy to 
stand second to him. We now celebrate the cen- 
tenary of the last of these great Scotchmen, — 
Thomas Carlyle, — and it is fitting that we should 
survey his life and work. 1 

In a time like our own, when literature on 

1 First printed in The Forum, New York, December, 1895. 



164 PORTRAITS 

either side of the Atlantic lacks original energy ; 
when the best minds are busy with criticism rather 
than with creation ; when ephemeral story-tellers 
and spineless disciples of culture pass for mas- 
ters, and sincere but uninspired scholars have our 
respect but move us not, — we shall do well to 
contemplate anew the man who by his personality 
and his books has nobly swayed two generations of 
the English-speaking race, and who, as the years 
recede, looms more and more certainly as the fore- 
most modern British man of letters. Men may 
look distorted to their contemporaries, like the 
figures in a Chinese picture ; but Time, the wisest 
of painters, sets them in their true perspective, 
gives them their just proportions, and reveals their 
permanent features in light and shade. And suf- 
ficient time has now elapsed for us to perceive 
. that Carlyle belongs to that thrice-winnowed class 
of literary primates whom posterity crowns. He 
holds in the nineteenth century a position similar 
to Johnson's in the eighteenth, and to Milton's in 
the seventeenth, — each masterful, but in a differ- 
ent way ; each typifying his age without losing his 
individuality ; all brothers in preeminence. 

When, for convenience' sake, we classify Car- 
lyle among men of letters, we fail to describe 
him adequately. The phrase suggests too little. 
Charles Lamb, the lovable, is the true type of 



CARLYLE 165 

men of letters, who illuminate, sweeten, delight, 
and entertain us., Carlyle was far more : he was 
a mighty moral force, using many forms of litera- 
ture — criticism, biography, history, pamphlets — 
as its organs of expression. He had, as the dis- 
cerning Goethe said of him, " unborrowed princi- 
ples of conviction," by which he tested the world. 
He felt the compulsion of a great message in- 
trusted to him. There rings through most of his 
utterances the uncompromising "Thus saith the 
Lord" of the Hebrew prophets, — a tone which, 
if it do not persuade us, we call arrogant, yet 
which speaks the voice of conscience to those who 
give it heed. What, then, was his message? — 
what those " unborrowed principles of conviction " 
by which he judged his time ? 

Born in the poor village of Ecclefechan on De- 
cember 4, 1795, his childhood and youth were 
spent amid those stern conditions by which, rather 
than by affluence, brave, self-reliant, earnest char- 
acters are moulded. His parents were Calvinists, 
to whom religion was the chief concern, and who 
taught him by example the severe virtues of that 
grim sect. Next to religion, and its active mani- 
festation in a pious life, they prized education, 
begrudging themselves no sacrifices by which their 
son might attend the University of Edinburgh. 
They wished him to be a minister, but when he 



166 PORTRAITS 

came to maturity he recognized his unfitness for 
that vocation and abandoned it. They acquiesced 
regretfully, little dreaming that he who refused 
to be confined in some Annandale pulpit should 
become the foremost preacher of his age. 

Carlyle's reluctance was rooted in conscientious 
scruples. He began by questioning the authority 
of his Church ; he went on to sift the authority of 
the Bible. Little by little the whole wondrous 
fabric of supernatural Christianity crumbled be- 
fore him. He could not but be honest with him- 
self ; he could not but see how Hebrew legend 
had overgrown the stern ethical code attributed 
to Moses ; how the glosses of Paul and Augustine 
and a hundred later religionists had changed or 
perverted the simple teaching of Christ. Awe- 
struck, he beheld the God of his youth vanish out 
of the world. He wandered in the wilderness of 
doubt ; he wrestled daily and nightly with despair. 
And then slowly, painfully, after brooding through 
long years, he saw the outlines of a larger faith 
emerge from the gloom. He fortified himself by 
acknowledging that, since righteousness is eternal, 
it cannot perish when we reject whatever opinions 
some Council of Westminster, of Trent, or of 
Nice may have resolved about it. 

Only earnest souls who have experienced the 
wrench which comes when we first break away 



CARLYLE 167 

from the bondage of an artificial religion, and 
perceive that the moral law may be something 
very different from dogmas, know the pang it 
costs. The dread of losing the truth when errors 
are thrown over — nay, the apparent hopelessness 
of being able to decide what is truth — causes 
many to hesitate, and some to turn back. Carlyle 
was not, of course, the first in Britain to tread the 
desolate path from Superstition into Rationalism. 
In the eighteenth century — to go no farther back 
— two very eminent minds had preceded him ; but 
in both Hume and Gibbon the intellectual pre- 
dominated over the moral nature, and to tempera- 
ments like theirs the pangs of new birth are always 
less acute. It is because in Carlyle the moral 
nature preponderated — intense, fiery, and endur- 
ing — that he became the spokesman of myriads 
who since him have had a similar experience. 

If we were to hazard a generalization which 
should sum up the nineteenth century, might we 
not affirm that the chief business of the century 
has been to establish a basis of conduct in har- 
mony with what we actually know of the laws 
governing the universe? Hitherto, for ages to- 
gether, men have not consciously done this, but 
they have accepted standards handed down to them 
by earlier men, who compounded these standards 
out of little knowledge, much ignorance, legend, 



168 PORTRAITS 

and hearsay. Skeptics there have always been, 
but usually, like the skeptics who flourished in the 
last century, they have differed from the doubters 
in ours by the degree of their moral intensity. 
Whether we turn to Carlyle or to George Eliot, 
we find each tirelessly busy in substituting for the 
worn-out tenets of the past, springs of belief and 
conduct worthy to satisfy a more enlightened con- 
science. 

Here, then, we have the corner-stone of Car- 
lyle' s influence. Our world is a moral world ; 
conscience and righteousness are eternal realities, 
independent of the vicissitudes of any church. If 
we seek for a definite statement of Carlyle's creed, 
we shall be disappointed; he never formulated 
any. After breaking loose from one prison, he 
would have scoffed at the idea of voluntarily lock- 
ing himself up in another. He held that to pos- 
sess a moral sense is to possess its justification; 
that conscience is a fact transcending logic just as 
consciousness or life itself does. In the presence 
of this supreme fact he cared little for its gene- 
alogy. The immanence of God was to him an 
ever-present, awful verity. 

Likewise, when we come to examine his philoso- 
phy, we discover that he constructed no formal 
system. He absorbed the doctrine of Kant and 
his followers, and may be classed, by those who 



CARLYLE 169 

insist that every man shall have a label, among 
the transcendentalists : but his main interest was 
the application of moral laws to life, the trial of 
men and institutions in the court of conscience, 
rather than the exercise of the intellect in meta- 
physical speculations. The mystery of evil may 
not be explained for some ages, if ever ; while we . 
argue about it, evil grows : the one indispensable 
duty for all of us, he would say, is to combat evil 
in ourselves and in society now and here. The 
stanch seaman, when his ship founders, does not 
waste time in meditating why it should be that 
water will sink a ship, but he lashes together a 
raft, if haply he may thereby come off safe. 

In these respects we behold Carlyle a true repre- 
sentative of his time. Before the vast bulk of sin 
and sorrow and pain he did not cower ; he would 
fight it manfully. But the smoke of battle dark- 
ened him. The spectacle of mankind, dwelling in 
Eternity, yet ignorant of their heritage, pursuing 
" desires whose purpose ends in Time ; " of souls 
engaged from dawn to dusk of their swift-fleeting 
existence, not on soul's business, but on body's 
business, worshiping idols they know to be false, 
deceiving, persecuting, slaying each other, — con- 
firmed a tendency to pessimism to which his early 
Calvinism had predisposed him. But Carlyle's 
pessimism must not be confounded with Swift's 



170 PORTRAITS 

misanthropy, or with Leopardi's blank despair, or 
with the despicable Schopenhauer's cosmic nega- 
tion of good. Carlyle was neither cynic nor mis- 
anthrope. He might exclaim with Ecclesiastes, 
" Vanity of vanities, all is vanity! " but he would 
mean that the ways and works of man are vain 
in comparison with his possibilities, and with the 
incalculable worth of righteousness. " Man's un- 
happiness, as I construe," he says, " comes of his 
greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in 
him which, with all his cunning, he cannot quite 
bury under the Finite. Always there is a black 
spot in our sunshine : it is even the Shadow of 
Ourselves." 

These being the elements of Carlyle's moral 
nature, let us look for a moment at the world 
which he was to test by his " unborrowed princi- 
ples of conviction." He came on the scene dur- 
ing the decade of reaction which followed the 
battle of Waterloo. Official Europe, confounding 
the ambition of Napoleon with the causes under- 
lying the Revolution, supposed that in crushing 
one it had destroyed the other. The motto of the 
Old Eegime had been Privilege, of the New it 
was Merit. The revived political fashions of the 
eighteenth century, though cut by such elegant 
tailors as Metternich, Castlereagh, and Polignac, 
chafed a generation which had grown used to a 



CARLYLE 171 

freer costume. At any time there yawns between 
the ideals and the practices of society a discrepancy 
which provokes the censure of the philosopher and 
the sarcasm of the cynic ; but in a time like the 
Restoration, when some men consciously repudiated 
and none sincerely believed the system thrust upon 
them, the chasm between profession and perform- 
ance must open wider still, revealing not only the 
noble failures born of earnest but baffled endeavor, 
but also all the hideous growths of hypocrisy, of 
deceptions, insincerities, and intellectual fraud. 
And in very truth the Old Regime resuscitated 
by Europe's oligarchs was doubly condemned, 
— first, as being unfitted to the new age; and, 
secondly, as having marked in the eighteenth cen- 
tury, when it flourished, the logical conclusion of a 
political and social epoch. In 1820 the trunk and 
main branches of the tree of Feudalism were dead : 
he was not a wise man who imagined that the still 
surviving upper branches would long keep green. 

Not alone in the political constitution of society 
were momentous changes operating. They but 
represented the attempt of man to work out, in 
his civic and social relations, ideas which had 
already penetrated his religion and his philosophy. 
Distil those ideas to their inmost essence, its name 
is Liberty. The old Church, whether Roman or 
Protestant, lay rotting at anchor in the land-locked 



172 PORTRAITS 

bayou of Authority ; and the pioneers of the new 
convictions, abandoning her and her cargo of anti- 
quated dogmas, had pushed on across intervening 
morasses to the shore of the illimitable sea ; yea, 
they were launching thereon their skiffs of modern 
pattern, and resolutely, hopefully steering whither 
their consciences pointed. Better the storms of 
the living ocean than the miasma of that stagnant, 
scum-breeding pool ! But a church is of all insti- 
tutions that to which men cling most stubbornly, 
paying it lip-service long after its doctrines have 
ceased to shape their conduct or to lift their aspi- 
rations ; trying to believe, in spite of their unbe- 
lief, that it will continue to be to them a source of 
strength as it once was to their fathers ; preserv- 
ing forms, but veneering them with contradictory 
meanings; coming at last to declare that an in- 
stitution must be kept, if for no other reason than 
because it once fulfilled the purposes for which it 
is now inadequate. The aroma of association has 
for some minds the potency of original inspiration. 
Who can ponder on life without perceiving that 
whereas in their business, their possessions, their 
love, and their hate, men resent dictation ; in mat- 
ters beyond the scope of experience, and conse- 
quently beyond proof, — as the conditions of a 
future life, — men credulously accept the guidance 
of others quite as ignorant as themselves, from 



CARLYLE 173 

whom in their business or their passions they 
would submit to no interference ? 

Needless to say the revived Old Regime in- 
trenched itself behind whatever church it found 
standing, — in Prussia the Lutheran, in England 
the Anglican, in Scotland the Calvinist, in the 
Latin countries the Roman. The ecclesiastical in- 
stitution might not humanize the masses, but at 
least it held them in check ; it might not spiritual- 
ize the classes, but it taught them that in rallying 
to its support they were best guarding their own 
privileges. Metternich, whom we call the repre- 
sentative of the Restoration, did not scruple to 
announce that, as the dangers which threatened 
Church and State were identical, the Church could 
be saved only by upholding the State. Not for 
the first time in history was the priest a policeman 
in disguise. 

Into this world of transition Thomas Carlyle f) 
strode with his store of unborrowed principles. 
Right or wrong, his convictions were his own ; 
therefore they were realities that need not fear a 
conflict with ghosts of dead convictions and insin- 
cerities. 

Naturally, one of the first facts that amazed 
him was the monstrous unreality in that transi- 
tional society. By the census the people of Great 
Britain were rated as Christians; by their acts 



174 PORTRAITS 

they seemed little better than barbarians. What 
availed the Established Church, in which livings 
were assigned at the pleasure of some dissolute 
noble, fox-hunting parsons were given the cure 
of souls, and worldlings or unbelievers rose to be 
bishops ? Could the loudest protestations explain 
the existence of great, gaunt, brutalized masses, 
beyond the pale of human charity ; every horse 
sleek, well lodged, and well fed, but innumerable 
men dying of hunger or lodged in the almshouse ? 
Can that be true civilization in which the various 
constituents recognize no interdependence, and 
only a few usurp benefits which are pernicious 
unless they be free to all? ' Eespectability, and 
not virtue, — that, Carlyle declared, was John 
Bull's ideal, and he opened fire upon its chief 
allies, Sham and Cant. He spared no prejudices, 
he respected no institutions. "With sarcasm until 
then unknown in English, he unmasked one arti- 
ficiality after another, disclosing the cruelty or the 
hypocrisy which lurked behind it, and setting over 
against it the true nature of the thing it pretended 
to be. To interpret such conditions by the crite- 
rion of conscience was to condemn them. 

But Carlyle's mission was not merely to destroy : 
he shattered error in order that the clogged foun- 
tain of truth might once more gush forth. Before 
eyes long dimmed with gazing on insincerity, he 



CARLYLE 175 

would hold up shining patterns of sincerity ; souls 
groping for guidance, he would stay and comfort 
by precedents of strength; hearts pursuing false 
idols, he would chasten by examples of truth. 
Men talked — and nowhere more pragmatically 
than in the churches — as if God, after having im- 
parted his behests to a few Hebrews ages ago, had 
retired into some remote empyrean, and busied 
himself no more with the affairs of men. But to 
Carlyle the immanence of God was an ever-present 
reality, manifesting itself throughout all history 
and in every individual conscience, but nowise 
more clearly than in the careers of great men. 

Thus he made it his business to set before his 
contemporaries models worthy of veneration, for 
he recognized that worship is a primary moral 
need. " Great men," he says, " are the inspired 
(speaking and acting) Texts of that divine Booh 
of Revelations, whereof a Chapter is completed 
from epoch to epoch, and by some named His- 
tory" In this spirit he introduced Goethe, the 
latest of the heroes, to English readers, as the 
man who, from amid chaos similar to that which 
bewildered them, had climbed to a position where 
life could be lived nobly, rationally, well. " Close 
your Byron, open your Goethe," was his advice to 
those in whom Byron's mingled defiance and senti- 
mentality found an echo. He showed in Crom- 



176 PORTRAITS 

well how religious zeal is something very different 
from a phantom faith. He laid bare the truth in 
Mahomet. He made Luther live again. And all 
to the end that he might convince his dazed con- 
temporaries that in no age, if we look deeply, shall 
we look in vain for concrete, living examples of 
those qualities which are indispensable to right 
action ; that salvation — the purging of the char- 
acter — is won by exercising virtues, and not by 
conforming to a stereotyped routine ; that the au- 
thority of conscience is a present fact, not a mere 
mechanism which God wound up and gave to the 
Hebrews, and has been transmitted in poor repair 
by them to us. As an antidote to sterilizing 
doubt, Carlyle prescribed the simple remedy which 
sums up the wisdom of all the sages : " Do the 
Duty which lies nearest thee, which thou knowest 
to be a Duty ! Thy second Duty will already have 
become clearer." In this fashion did Carlyle dis- 
charge his mission as a moral regenerator. We 
live as individuals, and to the individual conscience 
he made his appeal, caring little for the organiza- 
tion of principles into institutions. Rather, like 
every individualist, did he incline to deprecate the 
numbing effect of institutions. Let each unit be 
righteous, in order that whatever the collective 
units shall establish may be righteous too. 

Bearing this in mind, we shall understand Car- 



CARLYLE 177 

lyle's attitude toward the great social and intel- 
lectual movements of his time. The watchword 
which had inspired generous minds at the end of 
the last century was Liberty, and after the thun- 
ders of the Napoleonic wars that had drowned it 
died away, it rang out its summons more clearly 
than before, never again to be quite deadened, 
despite all the efforts of the Old Regime. The 
application of the theory of Liberty to govern- 
ment resulted in setting up Democracy as the ideal 
political system. Since every citizen in the State 
bears, directly or indirectly, his fraction of the 
burden of taxation, and since he is affected by the 
laws, and interested, even to the point of laying 
down his life, in the preservation of his country, 
Democracy declares that he should have an equal 
part with every other citizen in determining what 
the taxes and policy of his State shall be ; and it 
thrusts upon him the responsibility of choosing his 
own governors and representatives. To Carlyle 
this ideal seemed a chimera. Honest, just, and 
intelligent government is of all social contrivances 
the most difficult: by what miracle, therefore, 
shall the sum of the opinions of a million voters, 
severally ignorant, be intelligent? As well blow 
a million soap-bubbles, each thinner than gossa- 
mer, and expect that collectively they will be hard 
as steel! Or, admitting that the representatives 



178 POKTEAITS 

Demos chooses be not so incompetent as itself, 
how shall they be kept disinterested ? Their very- 
numbers not only make them unmanageable, but 
so divide responsibility that any individual among 
them can shift from his own shoulders the blame 
for corrupt or harmful laws. Moreover, popular 
government means party government, and that 
means compromise. To Carlyle, principles were 
either right or wrong, and between right and 
wrong he saw no neutral ground for compromise. 
Party government cleaves to expediency, which at 
best is only a half-truth; but half-truth is also 
half-error, and any infinitesimal taint of error 
vitiates the truth to which it clings. Finally, 
Democracy substitutes a new, many-headed tyr- 
anny — more difficult to destroy because many- 
headed — for the tyranny it would abolish. 

Such objections Carlyle urged with consummate 
vigor. He foresaw, too, many of the other evils 
which have accompanied the development of this 
system to impair its efficacy, such as the rise of 
a class of professional politicians, of political 
sophists, of corrupt "bosses," expert in the art 
of wheedling the ignorant many, and thereby of 
frustrating the initial purpose of the system. His 
opposition did not spring from desire to see the 
masses down-trodden, but from conviction that 
they need guidance and enlightenment, and that 



CARLYLE 179 

they are therefore no more competent to choose 
their own law-makers than children are to choose 
their own teachers. In knowledge of public affairs 
Demos is still a child, innocent, well-intentioned, if 
you will ; but ignorant, and by this system left to 
the mercy of the unscrupulous. 

This brings us to consider the charge that Car- 
lyle, in his exaltation of the Strong Man, wor- 
shiped crude force. Let us grant that on the 
surface the accusation seems plausible ; but when 
we seek deeper, we shall discover that he exalts 
Cromwell and Frederick, not because they were 
despots, but because, in his judgment, they knew 
better than any other man, or group of men, in 
their respective countries, how to govern. Their 
ability was their justification ; their force, but 
the symbol of their ability. " Weakness " — Car- 
lyle was fond of quoting — " is the only misery." 
What is ignorance but weakness (through lack of 
training) of the intellect ? In the incessant battle 
of life, — and few men have been more constantly 
impressed than Carlyle by the battle-aspect of 
life, — weakness of whatever kind succumbs to 
strength. Evil perpetually marshals its forces 
against Good, — positive, aggressive forces, to be 
overcome neither by inertia, nor indifference, nor 
half-hearted compromise, but by hurling stronger 
forces of Good against them. Interpreting Car- 



180 PORTRAITS 

lyle's views thus, we perceive why he extolled the 
Strong Man and distrusted the aggregate igno- 
rance of Democracy. Furthermore, we must not 
forget that he never considered politics the prime 
business of life : . first, make the masses righteous, 
next, enlightened, and then they will naturally 
organize a righteous and enlightened government. 
When Carlyle rejoined to the zealots of Demo- 
cracy or other panaceas, " Adopt your new system 
if you must, will not the same old human units 
operate it? Were it not wiser to perfect them 
first?" — he antagonized the spirit of the age: 
wisely or not, only time can show. Those of us 
who would reject his arguments would neverthe- 
less admit that Democracy is still on trial. 

With equal fearlessness he attacked the cheap 
optimism based on material prosperity, which brags 
of the enormous commercial expansion made pos- 
sible by the invention of machinery ; which boasts 
of the rapid increase in population — so many 
more million mouths to feed and bodies to clothe, 
and so much more food and raiment produced — 
from decade to decade. These facts, he insisted, 
are not of themselves evidences of progress. Your 
inventions procure greater comfort, a more exu- 
berant luxury ; but do comfort and luxury neces- 
sarily build up character? — do they not rather 
unbuild it? Are your newly bred millions of bodies 



CAKLYLE 181 

more than bodies? Take a census of souls, has 
their number increased? Though your steam- 
horse carries you fifty miles an hour, have you 
thereby become more virtuous ? Though the light- 
ning bears your messages, have you gained bra- 
very ? Of old, your aristocracy were soldiers : is 
the brewer who rises from his vats to the House 
of Lords — is any other man owing his promotion 
to the tradesman's skill in heaping wealth — more 
worshipful than they ? Let us not say that this 
amazing industrial expansion may not conduce to 
the uplifting of character ; but let us strenuously 
affirm that it is of itself no indication of moral 
progress, and that, if it fail to be accompanied by 
a corresponding spiritual growth, it will surely 
lead society by the Byzantine high-road to effemi- 
nacy, exhaustion, and death. 

A different gospel, this, from that which Car- 
lyle's great rival, Macaulay, was preaching, — 
Macaulay, who lauded the inventor of a useful 
machine above all philosophers! Different from 
the optimism — which gauges by bulk — of the 
newspapers and the political haranguers ! Differ- 
ent, because true ! Yet, though it sounded harsh, 
it stirred consciences, — which smug flatterings 
and gratulations can never do ; and it gave a 
tremendous impetus to that movement which has 
come to overshadow all others, — the movement to 



182 PORTRAITS 

reconstruct society on a basis, not of privilege, 
not of bare legality, but of mutual obligations. 

Any inventory, however brief, of Carlyle's sub- 
stance, would be incomplete without some refer- 
ence to his quarrel with Science. To Science a 
large part of the best intelligence of our age has 
been devoted, — a sign of the breaking away of 
the best minds from the cretinizing quibbles of 
theology into fields where knowledge can be ascer- 
tained. It is a truism that Science has advanced 
farther in our century than in all preceding time. 
By what paradox, then, should Carlyle slight its 
splendid achievements ? Was it not because he 
revolted from the materialistic tendency which he 
believed to be inseparable from Science, a ten- 
dency which predominated a generation ago more 
than it does to-day? Materialism Carlyle re- 
garded as a Gorgon's head, the sight of which 
would inevitably petrify man's moral nature. 

Moreover, Carlyle's method differed radically 
from that of the scientific man, who describes 
processes and investigates relations, but does not 
explain causes. Pledged to his allegiance to tan- 
gible facts, the man of science looks at things seri- 
ally, pays heed to an individual as a link in an 
endless chain rather than as an individual, lays 
emphasis on averages rather than on particulars. 
To him this method is alone honest, and, thanks 



CARLYLE 183 

to it, a single science to-day commands more au- 
thenticated facts than all the sciences had fifty 
years ago. But there are facts of supreme im- 
portance which, up to the present at least, this 
method does not solve. The mystery of the origin 
of life still confronts us. Consciousness, the 
Sphinx, still mutely challenges the caravans which 
file before her. The revelations of Science seem, 
under one aspect, but descriptions of the habita- 
tions of life from the protoplasmic cell up to the 
human body. Immense though the value of such 
a register be, we are, not deceived into imagining 
that it explains ultimates. How came life into 
protoplasm at all ? Whence each infinitesimal in- 
crement of life, recognizable at last in the budding 
of some new organ ? And when we arrive at man, 
whence came his personality ? Each of us is not 
only one in a genealogical series stretching back 
to the unreasoning, conscienceless amoeba, but a 
clearly defined individual, a little world in himself, 
to whom his love, his sorrow, his pain and joy and 
terror, transcend in vividness all the experiences of 
all previous men : a microcosm, having its own im- 
mediate relations — absolute relations — with the 
infinite macrocosm. Science, bent on establishing 
present laws, measures by aeons, counts by mil- 
lions, and has warrant for ignoring your brief span 
or mine ; but to you and me these few decades are 



184 PORTRAITS 

all in all. However it may fare with the millions, 
you and I have vital, pressing needs, to supply 
which the experience of the entire animal kingdom 
can give us no help. Upon these most human 
needs Carlyle fastened, to the exclusion of what 
he held to be unnecessary to the furtherance of 
our spiritual welfare. He busied himself with 
ultimates and the Absolute. Not the stages of 
development, but the development attained ; not 
the pedigree of conscience, but conscience as the 
supreme present reality ; not the species, but the 
individual, — were his absorbing interests. 

Thus we see how Carlyle approached the great 
questions of life invariably as a moralist. Mere 
erudition, which too often tends away from the 
human, did not attract him. Science, which he 
beheld still unspiritualized, he undervalued : what 
boots it to know the " mileage and tonnage " of 
the universe, when our foremost need is to build 
up character? In politics, in philosophy, in reli- 
gion, likewise, he set this consideration above all 
others : before its august presence outward reforms 
dwindled into insignificance. 

Such was the substance of Carlyle' s message. 
Eemarkable as is its range, profound as is its im- 
port, it required for its consummation the unique 
powers of utterance which Carlyle possessed. 
Among the masters of British prose he holds a 



CARLYLE 185 

position similar to that of Michael Angelo among 
the masters of painting. Power, elemental, titanic, 
rushing forth from an inexhaustible moral nature, 
yet guided by art, is the quality in both which 
first startles our wonder. The great passages in 
Carlyle's works, like the Prophets and Sibyls of 
the Sixtine Chapel, have no peers : they form a 
new species, of which they are the only examples. 
They seem to defy the ordinary canons of criti- 
cism ; but if they break the rules it is because 
whoever made the rules did not foresee the possi- 
bility of such works. Transcendent Power, let it 
take whatever shape it will, — volcano, torrent, 
Csesar, Buonarotti, Carlyle, — proclaims : " Here 
I am, — a fact : make of me what you can ! You 
shall not ignore me ! " 

Of Carlyle's style we may say that, whether one 
likes it or not, one can as little ignore it as fail to 
perceive that he makes it serve, with equal success, 
whatever purpose he requires. It can explain, it 
can laugh, it can draw tears ; it can inveigh, argue, 
exhort ; it can tell a story or preach a sermon. 
Carlyle has, it is computed, the largest vocabulary 
in English prose. His endowment of imagination 
and of humor beggars all his competitors. None 
of them has invented so many new images, or 
given to old images such fresh pertinence. Your 
first impression, on turning to other writings after 



186 PORTRAITS 

his, is that they are pale, and dim, and cold : such 
is the fascination inalienable from power. Excess 
there may be in so vehement a genius ; repetition 
there must be in utterances poured out during 
sixty years ; an individuality so intense must have 
an equally individual manner ; but there is, rightly 
speaking, no mannerism, for mannerism implies 
affectation, and Carlyle's primal instinct was sin- 
cerity. His expression is an organic part of him- 
self, and shares his merits and defects. 
) Carlyle won his first reputation as a historian ; 
singularly enough, his achievements in history 
have temporarily suffered a partial eclipse. Teach- 
ers in our colleges refer to them dubiously or not 
at all. Does the fault lie with these same teach- 
ers, or with Carlyle ? A glance at the methods of 
the school of historical students which has sprung 
up during the last generation will explain the dis- 
agreement. 

History, like every other branch of intellectual 
activity, has responded to the doctrines of Evolu- 
tion. That most fertile working hypothesis has 
proved, when applied here, not less fruitful than 
in other fields. It has caused the annals of the 
past to be reinvestigated, every document, record, 
and monument to be gathered up, and the results 
have been set forth from the new point of view. 
Evolutionary science, as we saw above, fixes its 



CARLYLE 187 

attention primarily on the processes of develop- 
ment, and regards the individual, in comparison 
with a species or the race, as a negligible quantity. 
A similar spirit has guided historical students. 
They have turned away from " great captains with 
their guns and drums," away from figure-head 
monarchs, away from the achievements of even the 
mightiest individuals, to scrutinize human action 
in its collective forms, the rise and supremacy and 
fall of institutions, the growth of parties, the wax- 
ing and waning of organisms like Church or State, 
in whose many-centuried existence individual ca- 
reers are swallowed up. Using the methods of 
Science, these students have persuaded themselves 
that history also is a science, which, in truth, it 
can never he. Judicial temper, patience, veracity, 
— the qualities which they rightly magnify, — 
were not invented by them, nor are these the only 
qualities required in writing history. Speaking 
broadly, facts lie within the reach of any diligent 
searcher. But a fact is a mere pebble in a brook 
until some David comes to put it in his sling. 
True history is the arrangement and interpretation 
of facts, and — more difficult still — insight into 
motives : for this there must be art, there must be 
imagination. 

To the disciples of the " scientific school " it 
may be said that the heaping up of great stores of 



188 PORTRAITS 

facts — the collection of manuscripts, the catalogu- 
ing of documents, the shoveling all together in 
thick volumes prefaced by forty pages of biblio- 
graphy, each paragraph floating on a deep, viscous 
stream of notes, each volume bulging with a score 
of appendices — is in no high sense history, but 
the accumulation of material therefor. It bears 
the same relation to history as the work of the 
quarryman to that of the architect ; most worthy 
in itself, and evidently indispensable, but not the 
same. Stand before some noble edifice, — Lincoln 
Cathedral, for instance, with its incomparable site, 
its symmetry and majestic proportions : scan it 
until you feel its personality and realize that this 
is a living idea, the embodiment of strength and 
beauty and aspiration and awe, — and you will not 
confound the agency of the stone-cutters who 
quarried the blocks with that of the architect in 
whose imagination the design first rose. Neither 
should there be confusion between the historical 
hodman and the historian. 

Indubitably, history of the highest kind may 
be written from the evolutionist's standpoint, but 
as yet works of the lower variety predominate. 
Therefore, in a time when the development of in- 
stitutions chiefly commands attention, Carlyle, 
who magnifies individuals, will naturally be neg- 
lected. But in reality, histories of both kinds are 



CARLYLE 189 

needed to supplement each other. All institu- 
tions originate and exist in the activities of indi- 
viduals. The hero, the great man, makes concrete 
and human what would otherwise be abstract. 
Environment does not wholly explain him. It is 
easy to show wherein he resembles his fellows; 
that difference from them which constitutes his 
peculiar, original gift is the real mystery, which 
the study of resemblances cannot solve. Men will 
cease to be men when personality shall lose its 
power over them. 

Accepting, therefore, the inherent antagonism 
in the two points of view, — antagonism which 
implies parity and not the necessary extinction of 
one by the other, — we can judge Carlyle fairly. 
Among historians he excels in vividness. Perhaps 
more than any other who has attempted to chron- 
icle the past, he has visualized the past. The 
men he describes are not lay figures, with wooden 
frames and sawdust vitals, to be called Frenchmen 
or Germans or Englishmen according as a dif- 
ferent costume is draped upon them ; but human 
beings, each swayed by his own passions, striving 
and sinning, and incessantly alive. They are actors 
in a real drama: such as they are, Carlyle has 
seen them ; such as he has seen, he depicts them. 
To go back to Carlyle from one of the " scien- \\ 
tific historians " is like passing from a museum of 



190 PORTRAITS 

mummies out into the throng of living men. If 
his portraits differ from those of another artist, it 
does not follow that they are false. In ordinary 
affairs, two witnesses may give a different report 
of the same event, yet each may, from his angle 
of observation, have given exact testimony. Ab- 
solute truth, who shall utter it? Since history of 
the highest, architectonic kind is interpretation, 
its value must depend on the character of the in- 
terpreter. Not to be greatly esteemed, we suspect, 
are those grubbers among the rubbish heaps who 
imagine that Carlyle's interpretation of the French 
Revolution, or of Cromwell, or of Frederick, may 
be ignored. Character, insight, and imagination 
went to the production of works like these : they 
require kindred gifts to be appreciated. 

Neither of Carlyle's portrait gallery, unparal- 
leled in range, in which from each picture an 
authentic human face looks out at us ; nor of his 
masterpieces of narration, long since laureled even 
by the unwilling, — is there space here to speak. 
In portraiture he used Rembrandt's methods : seiz- 
ing on structural and characteristic traits, he dis- 
plays them in strong, full light, and heightens the 
effect by surrounding them with shadows. ! As 
a biographer he succeeded equally well in telling 
the story of Schiller and that of John Sterling : 
the latter a most difficult task, as it must always be 
to make intelligible to strangers a beautiful charac- 



CARLYLE 191 

ter whose charm and force are felt by his friends, 
but have no proportionate expression in his writ- 
ings. As an essayist he has left models in many 
branches : " Mirabeau," " Johnson," " Goethe," 
" Characteristics," " Burns," " History," stand as 
foothills before his more massive works. His is 
creative criticism, never restricted, like the criti- 
cism of the schools, to purely literary, academic 
considerations, but penetrating to the inmost heart 
of a book or a man, to discover what deepest 
human significance may there be found. A later 
generation has, as we have noted, adopted a differ- 
ent treatment in all these fields : bending itself to 
trace the ancestry and to map out the environ- 
ment of men of genius ; concentrating attention on 
the chain rather than its links ; necessarily belit- 
tling the individual to aggrandize the mass. It 
behooves us, while we recognize the value of this 
treatment as a new means to truth, not to forget 
that it is not the only one. By and by — perhaps 
the time is already at hand — we shall recognize 
that the other method, which deals with the indi- 
vidual as an ultimate rather than in relation to a 
series, which is human rather than abstract, cannot 
be neglected without injury to truth. Either alone 
is partial ; each corrects and enlightens the other. 

Meanwhile we will indulge in no vain prophe- 
cies as to Carlyle's probable rank with posterity. 
That a man's influence shall be permanent depends 



192 PORTRAITS 

first on his having grasped elemental facts in hu- 
man nature, and next on his having given them an 
enduring form. Systems struggle into existence, 
mature, and pass away, but the needs of the 
individual remain. Though we were to wake up 
to-morrow in Utopia, the next day Utopia would 
have vanished, unless we ourselves had been mira- 
culously transformed. To teach the individual 
soul the way of purification ; to make it a worthy 
citizen of Eternity which laps it around ; to kindle 
its conscience ; to fortify it with courage ; to hu- 
manize it with sympathy ; to make it true, — this 
has been Carlyle's mission, performed with all the 
vigor of a spirit " in earnest with the universe," 
and with intellectual gifts most various, most pow- 
erful, most rare. It will be strange if, in time to 
come, souls with these needs, which are perpetual, 
lose contact with him. But, whatever befall in 
the future, Carlyle's past is secure. He has influ- 
enced the elite of two generations : men as differ- 
ent as Tyndall and Euskin, as Mill and Tennyson, 
as Browning and Arnold and Meredith, have felt 
the infusion of his moral force. And to the new 
generation we would say : " Open your ' Sartor ; ' 
there you shall hear the deepest utterances of Brit- 
ain in our century on matters which concern you 
most ; there, peradventure, you shall discover your- 
selves.' ' 



TINTORET. 1 

I. HIS LIFE. 

We have no authentic biography of Tintoret. 
The men of his epoch hungered for fame, but it 
was by the splendor of their genius, and not by 
the details of their personal lives, that they hoped 
to be known to posterity. The days of judicious 
Boswells and injudicious Froudes had not then 
come to pass ; so that we are now as ignorant of 
the lives of the painters of the great school which 
flourished at Venice during the sixteenth century 
as of the lives of that group of poets who flour- 
ished in England during the reigns of Elizabeth 
and James I. Nevertheless, Providence sees to it 
that nothing essential be lost ; and, in the absence 
of memoirs, the masterpiece itself becomes a me- 
moir for those who have insight. In art, works 
which proceed from the soul, and not from the 
skill, are truthful witnesses to the character of 
the artist. " For by the greatness and beauty of 
the creatures proportionably the maker of them is 
seen." It is not wholly to be regretted, therefore, 

1 First printed in The Atlantic Monthly, June, 1891. 



194 PORTRAITS 

that the meagreness of our information concerning 
Tintoret compels us to study his paintings the 
more earnestly. The lives of artists are generally 
scanty in those adventures and dramatic incidents 
which make entertaining biographies. Men of 
action express their character in deeds : poems, 
statues, paintings, are the deeds of artists. Blot 
out a few pages of history, and what remains of 
Hannibal or Scipio ? But we should know much 
about Michael Angelo or Raphael from their paint- 
ings, had no written word about either come down 
to us. 

The year of Tintoret' s birth is variously stated 
as 1512 and 1518. Even his name has been a 
cause of dispute to antiquaries ; but since he was 
content to call and sign himself Jacopo (or Gia- 
como) Robusti, we may accept this as correct. 
His father was a dyer of silk (tintore), and as the 
boy early helped at that trade he got the nickname 
il tintoretto, " the little dyer." Vasari, also born 
in 1512, is the only contemporary who furnishes 
an account of Tintoret. Unsatisfactory and well- 
nigh ridiculous it is, if we remember that by 1574, 
when Vasari died, Tintoret had already produced 
many of his masterpieces. Yet the Florentine 
painter-historian did not accord to him so much 
as a separate chapter in his " Lives of the Most 
Excellent Painters," but inserted his few pages of 



TINTORET 195 

criticism and gossip, as if by an afterthought, in the 
sketch of the forgotten Battista Franco. Since 
much that has been subsequently written about 
Tintoret is merely a repetition of Vasari's shallow 
opinions, which created a mythical Tintoret, just 
as English reviewers created a mythical " Johnny 
Keats," long believed to be the real Keats, I quote 
a few sentences from Vasari. 

" There still lives in Venice," he says, " a painter 
called Jacopo Tintoretto, who has amused himself 
with all accomplishments, and particularly with 
playing music and several instruments, and is, 
besides, pleasing in all his actions ; but in mat- 
ters of painting he is extravagant, full of caprice, 
dashing, and resolute, the most terrible brain that 
painting ever had, as you may see in all his works, 
and in his compositions of fantastic subjects, done 
by him diversely and contrary to the custom of 
other painters. Nay, he has capped extravagance 
with the novel and whimsical inventions and odd 
devices of his intellect, which he has used haphaz- 
ard and without design, as if to show that this art 
is a trifle. . . . And because in his youth he 
showed himself in many fair works of great judg- 
ment, if he had recognized the great endowment 
which he received from nature, and had fortified it 
with study and judgment, as those have done who 
have followed the fine manner of his elders, and 



196 PORTRAITS 

if he had not (as he has done) cut loose from 
practiced rules, he would have been one of the 
greatest painters that ever Venice had; yet, for 
all this, we would not deny that he is a proud and 
good painter, with an alert, capricious, and refined 
spirit." 1 

Evidently, the originality of this " terrible " 
Tintoret could not be understood by Vasari, who 
imagined that he followed successfully the fine 
manner of his elders in the academic proprieties. 
But there is no hint that Tintoret heeded this gen- 
erous advice. Perhaps it came too late, — at three- 
score years one's character and methods are no 
longer plastic ; perhaps it had been too often reit- 
erated, for Tintoret had been assured from his 
youth up that, if he would only be instructed by 
his fellow-artists, he might hope to become a great 
painter like them. But, from the first glimpse we 
get of this perverse Tintoret to the last, one char- 
acteristic dominates all, — obedience to his own 
genius. Censure, coaxing, fashion, envy, popu- 

1 Vasari's condescending estimate of Tintoret may remind 
some readers of Voltaire's patronizing estimate of Shakespeare : 
" It seems as though nature had mingled in the brain of Shake- 
speare the greatest conceivable strength and grandeur with 
whatever witless vulgarity can devise that is lowest and most 
detestable; " and much more of the same kind about the "in- 
toxicated barbarian," which will seem pitiful or amusing accord- 
ing to the humor of the reader. 



TINTORET 197 

larity, seem never to have swerved him. Like 
every consummate genius, he drew his inspiration 
directly from within. " Conform ! conform ! or 
be written down a fool ! " has always been the 
greeting of the world to the self-centred, spirit- 
guided few. "Right or wrong, I cannot other- 
wise," has been their invariable reply. 

By the time that Tintoret made his first essays 
in painting, the Venetian school was the foremost 
in the world. The great Leonardo had died in 
France, leaving behind him in Lombardy a com- 
pany of pupils who were rapidly enslaved by a 
graceless mannerism. Even earlier than this, the 
best talents of Umbria had wandered into feeble 
eccentricities, or had been absorbed by Raphael's 
large humanism. Raphael himself was dead, at 
the height of his popularity and in the prime of 
his powers, and his disciples were hurrying along 
the road of imitation into the desert of formalism. 
Michael Angelo alone survived in central Italy, a 
Titan too colossal, too individual, to be a school- 
master, although there were many of the younger 
brood (Vasari among them) who called him Maes- 
tro, and fancied that the grimaces and contortions 
they drew sprang from force and grandeur such as 
his. But in Venice painting was flourishing ; there 
it had the exuberance and the strength, the joyous- 
ness and the splendor, of an art approaching its 



19a PORTRAITS 

meridian. John Bellini, the eldest of the great 
Venetians, had died ; but not before there had 
issued from his studio a wonderful band of disci- 
ples, some of whom were destined to surpass him. 
Giorgione, one of these, had been cut off in his 
thirty-fourth year, having barely had time to give 
to the world a few handsels of his genius. The 
fame of Titian had risen to that height where it 
has ever since held its station. A troop of lesser 
men — lesser in comparison with him — were em- 
bellishing Venice, or carrying the magic of her 
art to other parts of Italy. 

The tradition runs that the boy Tintoret amused 
himself by drawing charcoal figures on the wall, 
then coloring them with his father's dyes : whence 
his parents were persuaded that he was born to be 
a painter. Accordingly, his father got permission 
for him to work in Titian's studio, the privilege 
most coveted by every apprentice of the time. His 
stay there was brief, however ; hardly above ten 
days, if the legend be true which tells how Titian 
returned one day and saw some strange sketches, 
and how, learning that Tintoret had made them, 
he bade another pupil send him away. Some say 
that Titian already foresaw a rival in the youthful 
draughtsman; others, that the figures were in a 
style so contrary to the master's that he discerned 
no good in them, and judged that it would be 



TINTORET 199 

useless for Tintoret to pursue an art in which he 
could never excel. Let the dyer's son go back to 
his vats : there he could at least earn a livelihood. 
We are loth to believe that Titian, whose reputa- 
tion was established, could have been moved by 
jealousy of a mere novice : we must remember, 
nevertheless, that even when Tintoret had come to 
maturity, and was reckoned among the leading 
painters of Venice, Titian treated him coldly, and 
apparently thwarted and disparaged him. Few 
artists, indeed, have risen quite above the marsh- 
mists of jealousy. Their ambition regards fame 
as a fixed quantity, and, like Goldsmith, they look 
upon any one who acquires a part of this treasure 
as having diminished the amount they can appro- 
priate for themselves. But in Tintoret's great 
soul envy could find no place. " Enmities he has 
none," as Emerson says of Goethe. " Enemy of 
him you may be : if so, you shall teach him aught 
which your good-will cannot, were it only what 
experience will accrue from your ruin. Enemy 
and welcome, but enemy on high terms. He can- 
not hate anybody ; his time is worth too much." 

Under whom Tintoret studied, after being thrust 
off by Titian, we are not told. Probably he had 
no acknowledged preceptor except himself. Al- 
ready his aim was at the highest. On the wall of 
his studio he blazoned the motto, " The drawing 



200 PORTRAITS 

of Michael Angelo and the coloring of Titian" 
To blend the excellence of each in a supreme 
unity, — that was his ambition. Titian might shut 
him out from personal instruction, but Titian's 
works in the churches and palaces were within 
reach. Tintoret studied them, copied them, and 
conjured from them the secret their master wished 
to hide. Having procured casts of Michael An- 
gelo's statues in the Medicean Chapel at Florence, 
he made drawings of them in every position. Far 
into the night he worked by lamplight, watching 
the play of light and shade, the outlines and the 
relief. He drew also from living models, and 
learned anatomy by dissecting corpses. He in- 
vented " little figures of wax and of clay, clothing 
them with bits of cloth, examining accurately, by 
the folds of the dresses, the position of the limbs ; 
and these models he distributed among little houses 
and perspectives composed of planks and card- 
board, and he put lights in the windows." From 
the rafters he suspended other manikins, and 
thereby learned the foreshortening proper to fig- 
ures painted on ceilings and on high places. So 
indefatigable, so careful, was this man, who is 
known to posterity as " the thunderbolt of paint- 
ers " ! In his prime, he astonished all by his 
power of elaborating his ideas at a speed at which 
few masters can even sketch ; but that power was 



TINTORET 201 

nourished by his infinite painstaking in those years 
of obscurity. 

Wherever Tintoret might learn, thither he went. 
Now we hear of him working with the masons 
at Cittadella; now taking his seat on the bench 
of the journeymen painters in St. Mark's Place ; 
now watching some illustrious master decorating 
the fac.ade of a palace. No commission was too 
humble for him : who knows how many signboards 
he may have furnished in his 'prentice days ? His 
first recorded works were two portraits, — of him- 
self holding a bas-relief in his hand, and of his 
brother playing a cithern. As the custom then 
was, he exhibited these in the Merceria, that nar- 
row lane of shops which leads from St. Mark's to 
the Rialto. What the latest novel or yesterday's 
political speech is to us, that was a new picture to 
the Venetians. Their innate sense of color and 
beauty and their familiarity with the best works 
of art made them ready critics. They knew 
whether the colors on a canvas were in harmony, 
as the average Italian of to-day can tell whether 
a singer keeps the key, and doubtless they were 
vivacious in their discussions. Tintoret's portraits 
attracted attention. They were painted with noc- 
turnal lights and shadows, " in so terrible a manner 
that they amazed every one," even to the degree of 
suggesting to one beholder the following epigram : 



202 PORTRAITS 

" Si Tinctorectus noctis sic lucet in umbris, 
Exorto faciet quid radiante die ? " 1 

Soon after, lie displayed on the Rialto bridge an- 
other picture, by which the surprise already ex- 
cited was increased, and he began thenceforward to 
get employment in the smaller churches and con- 
vents. Important commissions which brought 
wealth and honors were reserved for Titian and 
a few favorites ; but Tintoret rejected no offer. 
Only let him express those ideas swarming in his 
imagination : he asked no further recompense. He 
seems to have been early noted for the practice of 
taking no pay at all, or only enough to provide 
his paints and canvas, — a practice which brought 
upon him the abuse of his fellows, who cried out 
that he would ruin their profession. But there 
was then no law to prohibit artist or artisan from 
working for any price he chose, and Tintoret, as 
usual, took his own course. 

At last a great opportunity offered. On each 
side of the high altar of the Church of Sta. Maria 
dell' Orto was a bare space, nearly fifty feet high 
and fifteen or twenty feet broad. " Let me paint 
you two pictures," said Tintoret to the friars, who 
laughed at the extravagant proposal. "A whole 
year's income would not suffice for such an under- 

1 If Tintoret shines thus in the shades of night, what will he 
do when radiant day has risen ? 



TINTORET 203 

taking," they replied. "You shall have no ex- 
pense but for the canvas and colors," said Tinto- 
ret. " I shall charge nothing for my work." And 
on these terms he executed " The Last Judgment " 
and "The Worship of the Golden Calf." The 
creator of those masterpieces could no longer be 
ignored. Here was a power, a variety, which hos- 
tility and envy could not gainsay : they must note, 
though they refused to admire. It was in 1546, or 
thereabouts, that Tintoret uttered this challenge. 
In a little while he had orders for four pictures 
for the School of St. Mark ; one of which, " St. 
Mark Freeing a Fugitive Slave," soon became 
popular, and has continued so. " Here is color- 
ing as rich as Titian's, and energy as daring as 
Michael Angelo's ! " visitors still exclaim. Other 
commissions followed, until there came that which 
the Venetian prized above all others, — an order 
to paint for the Ducal Palace. 

As the patriotic Briton aspires to a monument 
in Westminster Abbey, as the Florentine covets a 
memorial in Santa Croce, so the Venetian artist 
coveted for his works a place in the Palace of the 
Doges. That was his Temple of Fame. His dream, 
however, soared beyond the gratification of per- 
sonal ambition : he desired that through him the 
glory and beauty of Venice might be enhanced and 
immortalized. This devotion to the ideal of a city, 



204 PORTRAITS 

this true patriotism, has unfortunately almost dis- 
appeared from the earth. The very conception of 
it is now unintelligible to most persons. The city 
where you live — New York, Boston, London — 
you value in proportion as it affords advantages 
for your business, objects for your comfort and 
amusement; but you quit it without compunction 
if taxes be lower and trade brisker elsewhere. 
You are interested in its affairs just in so far as 
they affect your own. When you build a dwelling 
or a factory, you do not inquire whether it will 
improve or injure your neighbor's property, much 
less whether it will be an ornament to the city; 
you need not even abate a nuisance until com- 
pelled to do so by the law. 

But to the noble-minded Venetian, his city was 
not merely a convenience : it was a personality. 
Venezia was a spiritual patroness, a goddess who 
presided over the destiny of the State ; he and 
every one of his fellow-citizens shared the honor 
and blessing of her protection. She had crowned 
with prosperity the energy and piety, the rectitude 
and justice, of his ancestors through many centu- 
ries. Every act of his had more than a personal, 
more even than a human, bearing. How would 
it affect her? — that was his test. He could do 
nothing unto himself alone; for good or for ill, 
what he did reacted upon the community, upon the 



TINTOKET 205 

ideal Venezia. The outward city — the churches, 
palaces, and dwellings — was but tjie garment and 
visible expression of that ideal city. Venezia had 
blessed him, and he was grateful ; she was beau- 
tiful, and he loved her. His gratitude impelled 
him to deeds worthy of her protection; his love 
blossomed in gifts that should increase her beauty. 

This reverence and devotion have, as I re- 
marked, vanished from among men ; yet in this 
ideal beams the conception of the true common- 
wealth. Observe that those three cities which held 
such an ideal before them have bequeathed to us 
the most precious works of beauty. Athens, Flor- 
ence, Venice, — these are the Graces among the 
cities. At Karnak, at Constantinople, at Rome, 
at Paris, you will behold stupendous ruins or im- 
posing monuments commemorating the pride and 
power of individual Pharaohs, Sultans, Caesars, 
Popes, and Napoleons, but you will not find the 
spirit which was worshiped by the beautifying of 
the Acropolis, and of republican Florence, and of 
Venice. In which modern city will the most dili- 
gent search discover it? 

Tintoret, then, had at last earned the privilege 
of consecrating his genius to Venezia. His first 
work for her seems to have been a portrait of the 
reigning Doge. 1 Then he painted two historical 

1 It is interesting to know that the price regularly paid to 



206 POKTRAITS 

subjects, — " Frederick Barbarossa being crowned 
by Pope Adrian," and " Pope Alexander III ex- 
communicating Frederick Barbarossa ; " and " The 
Last Judgment," destroyed by the fire of 1557. 
Not long thereafter began his employment by the 
brothers of the confraternity of San Rocco. For 
their church, about 1560, he painted two scenes in 
the life of St. Roch, and then he joined in compe- 
tition for a ceiling painting for the Salla dell' Al- 
bergo in the School itself. The brothers called 
for designs, and upon the appointed day Paul Ve- 
ronese, Andrea Schiavone, Giuseppe Salviati, and 
Federigo Zuccaro submitted theirs. But Tintoret 
had outsped them, and when his design was asked 
for he caused a screen to be removed from the 
ceiling, and lo ! there was a finished picture of the 
specified subject. Brothers and competitors were 
astonished, and not greatly pleased. " We asked 
for sketches," said the former. " That is the way 
I make my sketches," replied Tintoret. They de- 
murred ; but Tintoret presented the picture to the 
School, one of whose rules made it obligatory that 
all gifts should be accepted. The displeasure of 
the confraternity soon passed away, and Tintoret 

Titian and Tintoret for state portraits was twenty-five ducats 
(about thirty-one dollars). Painters who have not a hundredth 
part of the genius of either Titian or Tintoret now receive one 
hundred times that sum. 



TINTORET 207 

was commissioned to furnish whatever paintings 
should be required in future. An annual salary 
of one hundred ducats was bestowed upon him, in 
return for which he was to give at least one paint- 
ing a year. Generously did he fulfil the con- 
tract ; for at his death the School possessed more 
than sixty of his works, for which he had been 
paid but twenty-four hundred and forty-seven 
ducats. 

In 1577 a fire in the Ducal Palace destroyed 
many of the paintings, and when the edifice was 
restored the government looked for artists to re- 
place them. Titian being dead, his opposition had 
no longer to be overcome ; yet even now Tintoret 
had to compete with men of inferior powers, but 
of stronger influence. Nevertheless, to him and 
Paul Veronese was assigned the lion's share of the 
undertaking, and for ten years those two men 
labored side by side, in noble rivalry, to eternize 
the beauty and the glory of Venice. In 1588, 
owing to the death of Paul Veronese, who with 
Francesco Bassano had been commissioned to paint 
a " Paradise " in the Hall of the Grand Council, 
the work was transferred to Tintoret, who devoted 
to it the last six years of his life, and left in it the 
highest expression not only of his genius, but of 
Italian painting. 1 Old age robbed him of none 

1 Has any on: remarked that when Tintoret was painting the 



208 PORTRAITS 

of his energy, but added sublimity to his imagi- 
nation, and interfused serenity and mellowness 
throughout his work. Still teeming with plans, 
he died of a gastric trouble, after a fortnight's ill- 
ness, on the 31st of May, 1594. 1 

With this clue, spun from the discursive records 
of Kidolfi (whose Meraviglie delV Arte was first 
published in 1648), we can pass through the laby- 
rinth of Tintoret's career. There are, besides, 
several anecdotes which help us to know the man's 
personality better : if all be not authentic, at least 
all agree in attributing to him certain well-defined 
traits. 

As a workman, as we have seen, Tintoret was 
indefatigable. His lifelong yearning was not for 
praise, but for opportunity to work. Modesty he 
had to a degree unrecorded of any other painter, 
although none seems to have been more confident 
of his own powers. 2 Like Shakespeare, he wrought 

" Paradise," Cervantes, Spain's spokesman before the nations, 
Montaigne, the largest figure in French literature, and Shake- 
speare, paragon not of England only, hut of the world, were his 
contemporaries ? Those four might have met in his studio ; and 
Science might have furnished three peerless representatives, — 
Bacon, Galileo, and Kepler. 

1 Tintoret is buried in the church of Santa Maria dell' Orto. 

2 Two instances are worthy of record. Having agreed to paint 
a large historical picture for the Doges' Palace, he said to the 
procurators, " If any other shall, within the space of two years, 
paint a better picture of this subject, you shall take his and reject 



TINTORET 209 

his masterpieces swiftly, and left them to their fate, 
because his imagination, like Shakespeare's, was 
already on the wing for higher quarry. There 
was in the man an inflexible dignity, born of self- 
respect, which neither the allurements of popularity 
nor the flattery of the great could bend. When 
invited by the Duke of Mantua to go to that city 
and execute some paintings, Tintoret replied that 
wherever he went his wife wished to accompany 
him ; at which the Duke bade him bring his wife 
and family, had them conveyed to Mantua in a 
state barge, and entertained them at his palace 
" at magnificent expense for many days." He 
urged Tintoret to settle there; but the Venetian 
could not be persuaded to renounce his allegiance 
to Yenice. He saw that titles would add nothing 
to his fame, and refused an offer of knighthood 
from Henry III of France. Princes and gran- 
dees and illustrious visitors to Venice went to his 
house ; but though he received them courteously, 
he sought no intimacy with them. His time was 
too precious, his projects were too earnest, to allow 
of aristocratic dissipation. He had a keen sense 

mine." At first his enemies spoke so censuringly of his " St. Mark 
Freeing the Fugitive Slave " that the brethren hesitated whether 
to accept it ; whereupon Tintoret had it brought back to his 
studio. Afterwards the brethren repented, begged for its return, 
and ordered three other pictures. 



210 PORTRAITS 

of humor, which displayed itself now in some 
ready reply, now in genial conversation with his 
familiars. Ridolfi relates that certain prelates 
and senators who visited him whilst he was mak- 
ing sketches for the " Paradise " asked him why 
he worked so hurriedly, whereas John Bellini and 
Titian had been deliberate and painstaking. " The 
old masters," said Tintoret, " had not so many 
to bother them as I have." At another time, at 
a gathering of amateurs, a woman's portrait by 
Titian was lauded. " That 's the way to paint," 
said one of the critics. Tintoret went home, took 
a sketch by Titian and covered it with lampblack, 
painted a head in Titian's manner on the same 
canvas, and showed it at the next meeting of these 
amateurs. " Ah, there 's a real Titian ! " they all 
agreed. Tiutoret rubbed off the lampblack from 
the original sketch and said : " This, gentlemen, 
is indeed by Titian ; that which you have admired 
is mine. You see now how authority and opinion 
prevail in criticism, and how few there are who 
really understand painting." 

Pietro Aretino, that depraved adventurer and 
most successful blackmailer in literature, was one 
of Titian's intimates and partisans. He wished, 
nevertheless, to have his portrait painted by Tinto- 
ret, who was in no wise afraid of the scoundrel's 
enmity, although most of the prominent person- 



TINTORET 211 

ages of the time quailed before it. Aretino being 
posed, Tintoret furiously drew a hanger from 
under his coat. Aretino was terrified lest he should 
be punished for his malicious tongue, and cried 
out, " Jacopo, what are you about ? " "I am 
only going to take your measure," said Tintoret 
complacently ; and, measuring him from head to 
foot, he added, " your height is just two and a 
half hangers." Aretino's impudence returned. 
" You 're a great madman," he said, " and always 
up to your pranks." But this grim hint sufficed ; 
the rascal never after dared to slander Tintoret, 
but, on the contrary, tried to ingratiate himself 
into his friendship. 

In his home Tintoret enjoyed tranquillity. His 
wife, Faustina de' Vescovi, was thrifty and digni- 
fied, and perhaps she was not a little annoyed by 
the " unpracticalness " of her husband. According 
to tradition, when he went out she tied up money 
for him in his handkerchief, and bade him give an 
exact account of it on his return. Having spent 
his afternoon and money with congenial spirits at 
some rendezvous whose name, unlike that of the 
Mermaid, where Elizabethan wits caroused, has 
been lost, he playfully assured Madonna Faustina 
that her allowance had gone to help the poor. 
She was particular that he should wear the dress 
of a Venetian citizen ; but if he happened to go 



212 PORTRAITS 

abroad in rainy weather, she called out to him 
from an upper window to come back and put on 
his old clothes. We have glimpses of him passing 
to and fro in Venice with Marietta, his favorite 
daughter, a painter of merit, whose early death 
saddened his later years. 1 Of his other children, 
two daughters entered a nunnery; a third mar- 
ried Casser, a German ; his eldest son, Domenico, 
adopted his father's profession, and assisted him 
in his work; another son went to the bad, and 
was cut off from an inheritance by his father's 
will. In spite of his habit of giving away pic- 
tures, or of charging a small price for them, Tinto- 
ret bequeathed a comfortable fortune to his heirs. 

A few of his precepts and suggestions concern- 
ing art have come down to us through Ridolfi, who 
had them from Aliense, one of Tintoret's pupils. 

"The study of painting is arduous," he used 
to say; "and to him who advances farthest in 
it more difficulties appear, the sea grows ever 
larger." 

" Students must never fail to profit by the ex- 
ample of the great masters, Michael Angelo and 
Titian." 

" Nature is alwaj^s the same ; in painting, there- 
fore, muscles must not be varied by caprice." 

" In judging a picture, observe if, at the first 

1 Marietta was born in 1560, and died in 1590. 



TINTORET 213 

examination, the eye is satisfied, and if the author 
has obeyed the great principles of art ; as to the 
details, each will fall into error. Do not go im- 
mediately to look at a new work, but wait till the 
darts of criticism have all been shot, and men are 
accustomed to the sight." 

Being asked which are the most beautiful colors, 
he answered, " Black and white ; because the for- 
mer gives force to figures by deepening the shad- 
ows, the latter gives the relief." 

He insisted that only the experienced artist 
should draw from living models, which lack, for 
the most part, grace and symmetrical forms. 

" Fine colors," he said, " are sold in the Rialto 
shops ; but design is got from the casket of genius, 
by hard study and long vigils, and is therefore 
understood and practiced by but few." 

Odoardo Fialeti asked him what to study. 
"Drawing," replied Tintoret. Somewhat later, 
Fialeti sought further advice. " Drawing, and 
again drawing," Tintoret reiterated. 

" Art must perfect nature," was his guiding 
rule ; and he instanced that Greek artist who 
modeled an Aphrodite by selecting the best fea- 
tures of the five most beautiful women he could 
find. 

His studio was in the most retired part of his 
house. Few were admitted to it, and they had to 



214 PORTRAITS 

find their way thither up a dark staircase and 
along dark passages, by the light of a candle. 
There he spent most of his time, — a grave man 
ordinarily, as must ever be the case with genius 
which ranges the utmost abysses and sublimities ; 
at heart a solitary man, so far as the absence 
of flesh-and-blood companions constitutes solitude, 
but forever attended by the great associates of his 
imagination. Laconic, too, in speech as with his 
brush ; as when, in reply to a long letter from his 
brother, he wrote simply, " Sir : no." But upon 
occasion — as that anecdote of Madonna Faustina's 
allowance shows — he indulged in conviviality ; 
and he had the gift, peculiar to a gentleman, of 
" being easy with persons of all ranks, and of put- 
ting them at ease." " With his friends he pre- 
served great affability. He was copious in fine 
sayings and witty hits, putting them forth with 
much grace, but without sign of laughter ; and 
when he deemed it opportune, he knew also how 
to joke with the great." 

Tintoret's genius was only partially acknow- 
ledged during his lifetime, and his fame has suf- 
fered strange vicissitudes since his death. At 
times he has been extolled with meaningless ex- 
travagance; oftener condemned, after Vasari's 
lukewarm fashion, or passed over without men- 
tion. Not until Mr. Kuskin came and opened the 



TINTORET 215 

eyes of the world had Tintoret been adequately- 
appreciated for those points of excellence wherein 
he has neither rival nor second. He has suffered 
for the same reasons that Shakespeare was long 
unesteemed in France : his works are bold, very- 
rapid, often unequal, not in the least to be mea- 
sured by the yardstick of conventionalism ; he 
treats many new subjects, and the old subjects he 
always treats in new fashion, thereby provoking 
formalists to accuse him of wilful oddity or ca- 
price ; his reputation for swiftness of execution 
was deemed by many presumptive evidence that 
he was superficial ; above all, his imagination was 
so rich and so powerful that it required a cognate 
imagination to follow it. 

Moreover, Tintoret was the last master of the 
great era of Italian painting. After him came 
schools which did not rely upon originality, but 
upon the inspiration of former masters. Pictures 
were but specimens of technique, and the mod- 
els chosen for imitation were naturally those in 
which technique could be most easily reduced to 
rules. The public, as well as the painters them- 
selves, gradually lost the power of valuing art as a 
spiritual expression. Word by word, sentence by 
sentence, the great language of painting was for- 
gotten, until at last it became as a dead language. 
It was inevitable that Tintoret's works, which had 



216 PORTRAITS 

not always been understood by his contempora- 
ries, should baffle the interpreters of art gram- 
mars and the pedagogues of technique. 

Again, Tintoret's pigments have suffered more 
than those of any other master. The darker 
colors, in many cases, have become almost black ; 
the lighter have faded, and sometimes completely 
changed. 1 How far this is due to an original de- 
fect in the paints, how far to exposure and neglect, 
I cannot say. It must always be remembered that, 
as popular canvases have been frequently var- 
nished and restored, many Titians and Raphaels 
are as fresh to-day as they were when they left the 
easel. How much remains of the original painting 
is another question. Directors of galleries aim at 
pleasing the public, not at respecting the prefer- 
ences of connoisseurs, and the public craves lively 
colors. It would feel itself imposed upon if it 
traveled to Dresden only to find the " Sixtine Ma- 
donna " as dark as would probably be the case if 
the restorer had not interfered. In every gallery 
you will observe that the crowds flock to the 
brightest pictures, irrespective of their merits. 
The fact that they have been kept bright is an 
advertisement that they are deemed precious ; and 
besides, it requires less time to glance at a clean 

1 In some of the paintings at San Giorgio the blues are now 
milky splotches. 



TINTORET 217 

canvas and pass on than to recover, after patient 
scrutiny and an effort of the imagination, some of 
the beauty which time and dust conceal. It is 
significant that the one painting by Tintoret which 
is most commonly mentioned by all classes of tour- 
ists — " St. Mark Freeing a Fugitive Slave " — 
is precisely that one which the directors of the 
Venice Academy keep polished as good as new. 

I cannot dismiss this subject without alluding 
to another cause for the slight attention given to 
Tintoret : his pictures are almost invariably con- 
demned to oblivion by the position in which they 
have been hung. You must look for them in dark 
corners near the ceiling, or in cross-lights which 
render an examination impossible. Of those which 
still exist in the churches for which they were 
painted, some have been injured by the drippings 
from candles ; others have been partly hidden by 
tabernacles, reliquaries, and other objects of church 
ceremonial. Travelers in Venice a generation ago 
record that rain leaked through the roof of the 
School of San Rocco, and soaked some of the can- 
vases ; others, hung near windows, have had to 
suffer from the strong sunlight for centuries. In 
the Ducal Palace, one series of ceiling paintings 
have succumbed to the daubing of restorers, and 
are now hardly recognizable as being Tintoret's ; 
while the matchless " Paradise," when I recently 



218 PORTRAITS 

saw it, 1 was falling rapidly to decay. The seams 
where the vast canvas was originally joined had 
rotted in many places; the canvas itself was 
warped and rumpled, forming little shelves and 
unevennesses on which the dust had collected so 
as to hide the colors ; and from the ceiling dan- 
gled a ragged fringe of cobwebs, in some places 
two or three feet long. 

A few generations hence, when these incom- 
parable works have been irretrievably damaged, 
posterity will wonder — with a wonder intensified 
by indignation — that we allowed them to perish. 
Early Christians, who mutilated pagan works of 
art because they believed them to be pernicious, 
may be excused ; but what excuse has our age to 
offer? We pretend to cherish all manifestations 
of culture, and we have ample means to preserve 
them ; yet whilst our museums are daily adding to 
their collections of half-barbarous antiquities, dug 
up in Arizona, in Mexico, in Yucatan, in Peru, 
in Asia Minor, in Mesopotamia, there are surely 
hastening to destruction scores of the works of 
the mightiest genius who ever honored painting. 
During the past twenty years, New York mil- 
lionaires have paid more for the immoralities and 
inanities of modern French painters than would be 
necessary to erect a separate gallery in Venice for 

1 In August, 1889. 



TINTORET 219 

the proper preservation of Tintoret's masterpieces. 
If there were but a single manuscript of Hamlet 
in the world, and no printing-presses, what should 
we say to those who allowed it to perish through 
neglect? Yet there are many of Tintoret's pic- 
tures, each of them as precious in its way as a 
page of Hamlet, which we raise no voice to save. 
In our selfishness, we forget that the treasures 
which we have inherited from the past are not 
ours to dissipate and destroy ; we hold them in 
trust for the future, and woe unto us if, unmindful 
of our responsibility, we prove careless stewards. 1 

II. HIS WORKS. 

What, then, are some of the qualities of Tinto- 
ret's genius ? First of all, he had vast scope : 
Christian and classic lore, the legend and story of 
Venice, contemporary scenes, and portraiture, — 

1 So long as the originals exist, copies of great paintings are as 
unsatisfactory as a Beethoven symphony or a Wagner opera on 
the piano ; hut when the originals have perished, copies may 
serve a worthy purpose in perpetuating at least the concept and 
general treatment of the painter. It is greatly to be desired 
that some capable student should do for Tintoret what Toschi 
has done for Correggio at Parma. A series of faithfully exe- 
cuted sketches would enable posterity to judge of Tintoret's 
range of imagination and inexhaustible powers of treatment, 
although his coloring and drawing could not be reproduced. 
Many of his paintings have never been engraved, and not one 
has been well engraved. 



220 PORTRAITS 

all these lay within his province. But scope alone, 
tinguided by rarer powers, does not suffice for 
the equipment of the supreme master. Rubens 
had scope, even Dore had it, and neither ranks 
among the foremost. In Tintoret it was accom- 
panied by a most intense imagination, which pene- 
trated to the elemental reality and understood the 
intertangled relations of life. Imagination oper- 
ated through him with a vigor more like Nature's 
own than that of any other man except Shake- 
speare ; a vigor which seems at once inexhausti- 
ble and effortless, which never wastes and never 
scants. In creating a beggar or a seraph he ex- 
pended just as much energy as was necessary for 
each; you do not feel that one was harder for 
him than the other. Tintoret's creations have this 
further resemblance to Shakespeare's : they live ! 
You do not exclaim, " This is a great picture ! " 
but, " This is a great scene ! " He is like a 
traveler who brings back views from a strange 
country : albeit you have never been there, yet the 
views are so real, the figures are painted so freely 
and lifelike, and not in conscious or conventional 
attitudes, that you cannot doubt their faithfulness, 
and are absorbed by the wonders and beauties 
they present. 

Tintoret never conspires to startle you by sensa- 
tional devices. Even in those works where he is 



TINTORET 221 

most daring he is really painting what his imagi- 
nation saw naturally, and is no more bent on in- 
venting oddities and marvels than was John in 
the Apocalypse. Before beginning a Biblical or 
an historical subject, he seems to have asked him- 
self, " How did this look to a bystander ? " and he 
relies upon the actuality of the scene to produce 
the desired impression. He has been charged, 
sometimes, with making Christ and his disciples 
too vulgar. Other painters have so accustomed 
you to look for a kingly personage in Christ, and 
for princely garments on his followers, that when 
you first see a " Last Supper " by Tintoret you 
miss the habitual elegance ; for he shows you sim- 
ple and earnest but not ignoble fishermen and ar- 
tisans of Judea. If you contemplate them wisely, 
your astonishment will deepen as you reflect that 
it was through and by such lowly and zealous men 
as these, and not by philosophers and prelates and 
princes, that the gospel of brotherly love was dis- 
seminated among mankind. It is legitimate for 
an artist to invest an historic character with em- 
blems which bespeak the significance posterity has 
attached to him ; but it is wholesome to see him 
as he probably appeared to his contemporaries, 
before subsequent generations have discovered a 
retroactive importance in his career. Tintoret em- 
ployed now one method and now the other, and 



222 PORTRAITS 

whosoever has been moved by the " Christ before 
Pilate " and " The Crucifixion " of the School of 
San Rocco needs not to be told that pathos and 
sublimity belong only to the former method. 

Tintoret's versatility would have made a lesser 
man renowned. He counted it but an amusement, 
when the learned critics chided him for not obey- 
ing academic rules, to imitate the style of Titian, 
or Paul Veronese, or Schiavone, so that the critics 
themselves were deceived and confounded. He in- 
variably adapted his treatment to the requirements 
of each work : if it was to be viewed from a consid- 
erable distance, he painted broadly; if it was to 
be seen near, no one surpassed him in the delicacy 
and carefulness of his finish. This sense of fit- 
ness governed his composition as well as his draw- 
ing. In a picture intended for a refectory, for 
instance, he introduced proportions in harmony 
with the dimensions of that refectory, causing it 
to appear more spacious and imposing. Where 
Tintoret's figures are not correctly drawn, the 
apparent fault was often intentional : restore the 
picture to the position for which he designed it, 
and the drawing will no longer offend; for he 
always took into account the distance and angle 
from which the spectator would look, and he is not 
responsible for the changes in location. In study- 
ing any picture, remember that there is one, and 



TINTORET 223 

only one, point of view where it can be seen as 
the artist wished it to be seen. If you stand too 
far or too near, you will miss his purpose. In a 
portrait by Titian or Tintoret, no line, no dot of 
color is superfluous : you must adjust your vision 
until the tiniest flake of white on the tip of the 
chin or on the pupils of the eyes shows you its 
reason for being there. Try to imagine that last 
perfecting touch away, and you will learn its value. 
For these men did nothing haphazard : they would 
as soon have wasted diamonds and rubies as their 
precious colors; every hair of their pencil was a 
nerve through which their imagination transmitted 
itself to the canvas. 

Although it be well-nigh impossible to describe 
a painting so that one who has not seen it can 
derive profit from the description, I shall attempt 
to point out a few of the characteristics of some of 
Tintoret's other works, in the hope of refreshing 
the memory of readers who are already familiar 
with them, and of stimulating the interest of those 
who may see them hereafter. It is the thmcgJit 
Tintoret has expressed, and not the technique of 
his manner, to which I would call attention, be- 
lieving that this can be in some measure made 
real even to those who cannot refer to the paint- 
ings themselves. 

One fact impresses us immediately, — Tintoret's 



224 PORTRAITS 

originality. Previous painters had used all the 
familiar Christian themes so often, that there had 
grown up a conventional form of representing each ; 
but, although Tintoret used these themes, his 
treatment of them rarely recalls that of any other 
painters, and always demands fresh study. Giotto 
may be said to have fixed the norm which his suc- 
cessors generally followed, diverging from it only in 
details. Tintoret established a new norm. More- 
over, he never copied himself; his inexhaustible 
imagination refused to repeat. It represented the 
same subject under different aspects, never twice 
alike. We have many replicas of Raphael's and 
Titian's works, but none, so far as I know, of 
Tintoret's. In rare cases where two copies of a 
painting by him exist, one is the sketch. 

In one famous instance he is brought into direct 
comparison with his rival, Titian. They both 
painted " The Presentation of the Virgin," in 
somewhat similar manner. Titian conceives the 
scene as follows : In front of a stately pile of 
buildings, two flights of steps lead up to the thresh- 
old of the Temple, where stands a venerable high 
priest ; near him are two other ecclesiastics and 
a youth. Spectators look out from the windows 
and balconies of the adjoining edifice upon Mary, 
a pretty little maiden, who has reached the first step 
of the second staircase, and, looking up at the high 



TINTORET 225 

priest, prepares to finish the ascent. Immediately 
back of her figure is an ornate Corinthian column. 
Her mother and a friend wait at the foot of the 
staircase, and a goodly company of Venetian no- 
bles is gathered near them, — like pleasure-seekers 
taking a stroll, who stop for a moment to witness 
a chance episode. An old woman with a basket 
of eggs sits in the foreground. A colonnade and 
pyramid close in the picture on the left, 1 and a 
pleasing view of mountains stretches out behind. 

This is Tintoret's conception : A high priest, pa- 
triarchal in dignity, stands at the top of a flight of 
steps leading to the door of the Temple. Just below 
him Mary is mounting, her slight form and dress 
being beautifully contrasted with the sky beyond. 
Behind her is a young woman (probably her mo- 
ther, Anne) carrying a young child. At the foot 
of the steps, in the centre of the painting, another 
mother (one of Tintoret's matchless creations) 
is pointing toward Mary, and telling her little 
daughter that she, too, will erelong be presented at 
the Temple. Two girls recline on the steps near 
by. On the left, seven or eight old men and idlers 
(such as one still sees at the approach to churches 
in Italy, and to mosques and synagogues in the 
Orient) are ranged along the stairs, indolently 

1 I use left and right to denote the positions as the spectator 
faces the picture. 



226 PORTRAITS 

watching the scene. The shadow of the building 
falls upon them, and prevents their figures from 
being too prominent. There is no suggestion of 
Venice or Venetian nobles. The attention is not 
distracted by costly apparel or imposing architec- 
ture, but is fixed upon the chief actors, — upon 
the venerableness of the high priest, the sim- 
plicity and confidingness of the little maiden, 
and the magnificent forms and naturalness of the 
women. 

Critics have disputed whether Titian's picture 
or Tintoret's be the earlier. The presumption is 
in favor of the former, 1 but there is no reason to 
cry plagiarism against either, because each master 
has worked out a similar conception with charac- 
teristic independence. The central idea — the 
youthful Virgin ascending the steps of the Temple 
to be received by the high priest — may be seen in 
one of Giotto's frescoes. 2 What we admire is the 
originality of treatment in both pictures. To me, 
Tintoret's conception seems the more nobly appro- 
priate ; and I know not in which of Titian's works 
to look for a counterpart of that woman in Tinto- 
ret's foreground, so easy, so living, so superb. 

1 Crowe and Cavalcaselle give 1539 as the date of Titian's 
" Presentation ; " 1545-46 is usually assigned as the date of 
Tintoret's. 

2 At the Arena, Padua. 



TINTORET 227 

As an example of Tintoret's insight into the 
spiritual world, turn to his picture of Lucifer. 1 
From early Christian times, the Evil One has 
been represented by very crude and vulgar sym- 
bols. A hideous face, horns, a tail, and cloven 
hoofs have come to be his accepted signs. Such a 
monster could never tempt even the frailest striver 
after righteousness ; for this conception illustrates 
the loathsomeness of the results of sin, and not the 
allurements by which sin entraps us. It would 
be equally appropriate to show to a lover a crum- 
bling skeleton as the effigy of the woman whom he 
loves. The Devil would make no converts if he 
announced himself to be the Devil, and dangled 
before men's eyes the despair, the degradation, the 
infinite remorse, which are his actual merchandise, 
instead of the fleeting pleasures and deceitful pro- 
mises under which he masks them. He is no bun- 
gler or fool, but supremely skilful in proportioning 
his enticement to the strength of his victim, and 
very alert in choosing the moment most favorable 
for attack. Goethe, in his Mephistopheles, has por- 
trayed the enemy of good under one of his aspects, 
emphasizing the cynical and wicked rather than 
the seductive and plausible qualities. Tintoret 
has depicted the latter. His Lucifer is still an 
angel, though fallen. He has a commanding and 

1 At the School of San Rocco, Venice. 



228 PORTRAITS 

beautiful form, aud a countenance which at first 
fascinates, until, on searching it more deeply, you 
fancy you discern a suggestion of duplicity, a hint 
of sensuality, in it. Bright-hued and strong are 
the plumes of his wings, and a circlet of jewels 
sparkles on his left arm, the sole emblem of the 
wearer's wealth. Here is indeed a being whose 
beauty might seduce, whose guile might deceive, 
— one whose presence dazzles and attracts, for 
it has majesty and grace and charm. Here is a 
fit embodiment of that ambition which shrinks 
not from crime in order to possess power ; or of 
that false pleasure which decoys men from duty, 
and, still flying beyond reach, leads its prisoner 
deeper and deeper into the abominations of the 
abyss. 

With equal originality and truth, Tintoret has 
illustrated the allegory of the temptation of St. 
Anthony. 1 This subject is usually treated either 
absurdly or grotesquely; as when the saint is 
discovered in a grotto through which bats, mice, 
witches, and imps flit and gambol. Not one of 
these ridiculous creatures, we may safely say, 
would frighten or tempt anybody. But who are 
the enemies that a man whose life is dedicated to 
holiness, and who has taken the three vows of 
poverty, chastity, and obedience, must resist? 

1 In the church of San Trovaso, Venice. 



TINTORET 229 

Tintoret's picture gives the answer. In it one of 
the figures, typifying Kiches, offers gold and pre- 
cious gems. " Why live a beggar ? " she pleads 
softly ; " take these and have power." A second 
figure, Voluptuousness, is that of a woman fair 
in body. " Come with me," she urges ; " let us 
taste of joy together while there is still time." A 
third, who (I think) represents Unbelief or Her- 
esy, has already dashed the saint's missal and 
rosary to the ground, has snatched up his scourge, 
and, endeavoring to drag him away, has plucked 
off his mantle. " Come with me," this tempter 
seems to say ; " there will be no more scourging, 
and fasting, and mortification ; with me your life 
shall be without care and unrestrained." Never- 
theless, Anthony, thus hard beset, looks heaven- 
ward, uttering a prayer for succor. Are not these 
apt personifications of those lower impulses to 
which even men of high resolve have succumbed ? 
All the witches of the Brocken and all the bats 
in a Pharaoh's tomb have nothing alluring about 
them. 

There are few of Tintoret's paintings which will 
not make similar revelations, if you look atten- 
tively. Often what appears to be only a casual 
accessory is the key to the whole composition. 
Let me cite two instances of his imaginative use 
of color. The first occurs in " The Martyrdom 



230 PORTRAITS 

of St. Stephen." 1 The saint has fallen on his 
knees beneath the stoning of his persecutors, but 
there is no melodramatic spurting of blood or sign 
of physical pain. His face betokens fortitude, 
resignation, and forgiveness of his tormentors. He 
gazes up steadfastly into heaven, and sees the glory 
of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand 
of God. The Almighty is clothed in a robe of 
red and a black mantle. In the background on 
earth, behind the martyr, a crowd watch the per- 
secution ; they are too far away for us to dis- 
tinguish faces, but one of them, who is seated, 
is clothed in black and red. It is Paul, soon to 
acknowledge Christ and put on the livery of God. 
Again, in the " Paradise," Tintoret gives profound 
significance to color as a symbol : Moses, the wit- 
ness to the Old Covenant, and Christ, the witness 
to the New Covenant, have robes of similar colors. 
The Doges' Palace contains a score of Tinto- 
ret's imaginative paintings and many of his por- 
traits, and there are few churches in Venice which 
have not at least one altar-piece by him. His 
best portraits, as I think, outrank even Titian's 
best : they have a vital quality, an inevitableness, 
which can be felt, but not described. What a con- 
course of doges, senators, procurators, nobles, and 

1 In the church of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice. Mr. Ruskin 
was the first to point out this stroke of genius. 



TINTORET 231 

soldiers lie has portrayed ! Their grave, refined 
faces, their stately carriage, the sobriety as often 
as the sumptuousness of their dress, bear witness 
to the glory and power of Venice ; that glory and 
power which had begun to decline in the sixteenth 
century, though the Venetians perceived it not. 
They misread the signs. They could not believe 
that Venice, which had continually grown in wealth 
during ten centuries, could decline or perish. Esto 
perpetua ! — may she live forever ! — was the last 
prayer of her historian, Sarpi, the abiding dream 
of all her citizens. 

It was Tintoret's pride to immortalize on canvas 
her legends and her history, and to illustrate her 
grandeur by means of allegory. He painted the 
popular stories of the recovery of St. Mark's body 
from Alexandria, and of the miracles performed 
by that holy patron. He painted the siege of 
Zara, the battle of Lepanto, and the ambassadors 
of Venice holding head before the haughtiness 
of Frederick Babarossa. He painted Venice en- 
throned among the gods, and Venice as mistress 
of the sea. 

But his genius was not confined to the expres- 
sion of pomp and patriotism. It delighted not 
only in majestic flights of imagination, but also 
in contemplating and in setting forth pure beauty. 
In one of the smaller rooms of the Ducal Palace 



232 PORTEAITS 

are two classic subjects by him, — " Mercury and 
the Graces," " Ariadne and Bacchus," — which, 
whether we regard their perfect symmetry, or the 
grace of their forms, or the delicious poetic spirit 
that emanates from them like fragrance from a 
bed of lilies, have few rivals in loveliness. They 
arouse in some beholders a mood akin to that 
which a joyous theme in one of Beethoven's sym- 
phonies can arouse, — a mood sweeter than hope 
itself, or the brightest afterglow of memory ; for, 
while it lasts, the present, flooded with peace and 
beauty and a nameless ecstacy, satisfies the soul. 

The School of San Rocco possesses sixty-four 
pictures by Tintoret. This series, illustrating the 
principal events in the Old and New Testaments, 
is quite without parallel, not only in extent, but in 
the excellence of a large number of the separate 
paintings. You pass from one to another as from 
scene to scene in Shakespeare ; and it is only when 
you return to the works of lesser men that you 
realize the richness and strength of the master, 
who has lifted you to his level so easily that you 
were conscious of no effort. The halls in which 
these paintings are kept are utterly inadequate for 
their proper examination : not one can be seen 
in a favorable light ; many are almost buried in 
gloom, or hidden in the equally impenetrable glare 
that falls on their surface from the cross-lights of 



TINTOKET 233 

conflicting windows. Some of the canvases have 
been injured by water ; the colors have grown dim 
or dingy with age ; and in some cases " restor- 
ers " 2 have blurred the outlines and brought dis- 
cord among the tones. Nevertheless, who that has 
once seen can ever forget many of those paint- 
ings ? The original conception looms up beautiful 
and grand from amid the wreck of time and neg- 
lect, like a mutilated, earth-stained Greek statue, 
and your imagination exerts itself to see the work 
as it must have appeared when the colors were 
fresh. Who can forget that flock of angels in 
" The Annunciation ; " or " The Visit of the 
Magi ; " or " The Flight into Egypt ; " or the 
terrible " Slaughter of the Innocents," which seems 
to have been painted in blood, though there is 
hardly any blood to be seen ; or " The Adoration 
of the Shepherds ; " or " Christ's Agony in Geth- 
semane ; " or " Christ before Pilate ; " or " Christ 
being led to Calvary " ? 

The series concludes with " The Crucifixion," a 
masterpiece before which artists and amateurs, and 
even academic critics, have stood in mute wonder. 
It is a panoramic summary of the last acts in the 

1 One painting bears the inscription, REST. ANTONTVS FLO- 
RIAN, 1834. " Exactly in proportion to a man's idiocy," Mr. 
Ruskin remarks, "is always the size of the letters in which he 
writes his name on the picture that he spoils." 



234 PORTEAITS 

persecution of Christ. No detail which the Evan- 
gelists furnish has been omitted, but all details 
have been subordinated to a unity so vast and im- 
pressive that it eludes analysis. Primarily, this is 
a pictorial representation of an historical event; 
but for the Christian believer it is an image of the 
profoundest religious meaning. There are many 
groups, but if you study each group you will dis- 
cover that without it something would have been 
wanting to the whole. Here are Romans, to whom 
the spectacle has no moral interest ; they are sol- 
diers and judges, executing unperturbed the Ro- 
man law upon the person of a Jew who has stirred 
up the wrath of his fellows and caused a popular 
tumult. Here are Jews, mocking and full of hate. 
Here, too, is the little remnant of Jews who, be- 
lieving in the victim as their master, are faithful 
to him unto death. Is not the indifference or the 
idle curiosity of some of the spectators as signifi- 
cant as the cruelty of his enemies and the devo- 
tion and anguish of his friends ? For consider 
well what it implies that any human being should 
gaze unmoved, or moved only as by an every-day 
occurrence, at a fellow creature suffering the pen- 
alty of death. Is life, then, so cheap ? Is a human 
soul of so slight account that men can cast lots or 
jeer while it passes in agony from earth forever ? 
Who can estimate the cruelty which delights in the 



TINTORET 235 

torments of that struggle ? And if this sacrifice 
be viewed with the eyes of a Christian, and not of 
an impassive observer, if the victim be esteemed 
not merely a man, but the Son of God, what words 
shall describe its solemnity? 

Tintoret has painted all this into his picture, in 
which the central object is the cross with Christ 
upon it. His head has sunk upon his bosom, and 
we imagine that with his downcast eyes he beholds 
the group of holy women at the foot of the cross, 
and says to Mary, " Woman, behold thy son." 
That group is the most pathetic that painter ever 
drew. Some of the women, overwhelmed by grief, 
have fainted. Not by their faces, but by their 
drooping, motionless bodies, can you infer the un- 
speakable burden which is crushing them. One 
kneels ; another — Magdalen, it may be — has 
risen, and looks up at the expiring Saviour. A 
venerable disciple gazes tenderly at the face of the 
Virgin, who has swooned. A younger disciple 
lifts his eyes toward Christ. They cannot help; 
they cannot speak ; they can only wait and sorrow. 
Who shall utter the agony that love feels when it 
is powerless to relieve the suffering of its beloved ! 

Behind this group stands a man holding a bowl, 
into which another man, who has climbed a ladder 
resting against the back of the cross, dips a sponge 
stuck on a spear. At the left, other executioners 



236 PORTRAITS 

are raising the cross on which one of t"he male- 
factors has been bound. Some men in front are 
tugging at ropes; others behind are pushing or 
steadying it. Hammers, adzes, a saw, and other 
tools bestrew the ground. Farther on are many- 
spectators, — a Koman officer in armor, elders, 
dignitaries, and a soldier bearing the Koman stand- 
ard. Some point toward Christ, and evidently 
say to one another : " That is the impostor who 
calls himself the Son of God and the King of the 
Jews. Where is his pretended might ? " A little 
in the background, a mounted spearman has thrown 
the reins on the neck of his ass, which compla- 
cently feeds on withered palm leaves, — an imagi- 
native touch characteristic of Tintoret, which will 
not be lost on those who recall Christ's entry into 
Jerusalem a few days before. 

In the foreground, to the right, a man is dig- 
ging a hole for the cross of the second malefactor, 
while soldiers are drawing lots for Christ's gar- 
ments, and other mounted soldiers are watching 
the proceedings near by. A little beyond, another 
group is busy attaching that malefactor to his 
cross ; one boring a hole for the spike to pierce 
his hand, another holding down his legs so that 
they can be bound, while a third has a rope. In 
the distance, men hurry toward the scene, lest they 
be too late to enjoy it ; and the foremost camels of 



TINTORET 237 

a caravan on its way into the city appear just at 
a turn in the road. For traffic and the daily toil 
of men are not interrupted by the crucifixion of 
Christ, though soldiers and idlers have come out 
to witness it. On the left there is a palace, and 
then hills succeeded by craggy mountains. The 
clouds have deepened almost into darkness along 
the horizon. The sun, as it sinks into this gloom, 
appears as a huge disk of ghastly light, and this 
disk forms a dim halo behind Christ's head. Yet 
a little while and the earth shall be wholly dark- 
ened, and these curious, careless spectators shall 
flee away in terror. 1 

Such, told briefly and inadequately, — for lan- 
guage can only hint at the effects of painting, — 
is this solemn event as conceived by Tintoret's 
imagination. 2 

We have no evidence that Tintoret visited 
Rome, nor any record of his journeys, except that 
to Mantua, yet we may be sure that he was famil- 
iar with the scenery of the mainland. The woods 
and foliage, the streams, valleys, and meadows, 

1 In a great picture, now ruined, at the abandoned Bavarian 
palace of Schleissheim, near Munich, Tintoret has represented 
the Crucifixion in its later aspect. 

2 This is one of the four or five paintings which Tintoret 
signed. It was finished in 1565. His receipt for its payment 
still exists. It is dated March 9, 1566. The sum received was 
two hundred and fifty ducats. 



238 PORTRAITS 

the little hills and picturesque mountains, which 
abound in his paintings, he did not see at Venice. 
Our lack of information leaves us in doubt, there- 
fore, whether he studied Michael Angelo's " Last 
Judgment" in the Sixtine Chapel. If he never 
went to Kome, he probably was acquainted, from 
engravings or copies, with the composition of that 
extraordinary work ; yet his own painting of that 
subject bears so little resemblance to Michael An- 
gelo's that it seems to have been produced inde- 
pendently. 

The masterpiece of the Sixtine Chapel is so com- 
plicated that it bewilders the student, until he 
observes that the principal groups are roughly 
arranged in an immense irregular horseshoe, the 
points of which are near the bottom of the lower 
wall, while Christ, the chief figure, is inclosed in 
the upper oval. Four fifths of the action takes 
place in the air, the lower portion alone of the 
fresco being occupied by the river Styx and its 
adjacent bank. In its present nearly ruined con- 
dition we cannot guess the original effect of this 
work ; but I doubt whether it could ever have 
satisfied the beholder's instinctive demand for har- 
mony. The groups, even the individuals, seem 
isolated, not only in space but in spirit. There 
is not, nor could there be, a single prevailing pas- 
sion. The only characteristic which applies to the 



TINTORET 239 

whole work is tremendous energy. Whatever of 
agony, of fury, of stubbornness, of determination, 
can be expressed by the human body, is expressed 
here. There is no muscle or tendon which is not 
exhibited in various positions ; no posture of limbs 
or trunk which is not represented. The resurrec- 
tion of the body is illustrated in a hundred ways, 
and the expression of the faces is of secondary 
importance. Here, patriarchs have the vigor of 
Titans ; saints are as robust as athletes ; Christ 
himself might be a majestically stern Apollo. Not 
without reason may we call these effigies of rest- 
less, writhing human beings wonderful diagrams 
of anatomy and concrete illustrations of dynamics. 
Even the saved, who occupy the higher regions, 
are not tranquil. In striving to comprehend these 
whirlwinds of action, the mind is wearied and 
baffled. Unit by unit you examine this multitude, 
and you are amazed in turn by sublimity, or hor- 
ror, or power. 

The space 1 to which Tintoret had to adapt his 
picture of " The Last Judgment " is oblong, about 
fifty feet high and twenty feet broad. In the 
upper part of the heavens Christ is represented, 
not in the character of the inexorable Judge, but 
in that of the Shepherd who welcomes his faithful 
flock to Paradise ; for the resurrection and judg- 

1 In the church of Santa Maria dell' Orto, Venice. 



240 PORTRAITS 

ment are coincident. On one side, near Christ, 
John the Baptist is kneeling, and Mary and the 
repentant sinner, who bears a cross, are near ; on 
the other side are personifications of the cardinal 
virtues. Extremely lovely is Charity, carrying in 
her arms two young children to present to the 
Saviour. Zones of fleecy clouds separate the up- 
per part of the painting into sections, in which the 
saints are ranked ; but the distribution seems natu- 
ral, not arbitrary, and serves to prevent confusion 
among so many figures. Midway in the scene, 
angels plunge earthward to rouse the dead. Mi- 
chael, with his terrible sword unsheathed, pursues 
the wicked toward a mighty river, which sweeps 
irresistibly into the abyss. In the distance, on a 
low shelf of sand amid the waters, is huddled a 
crowd of sinners, too indolent or too terrified to 
struggle against the flood which must soon engulf 
them. Crouching, they await their doom. In 
them Tintoret has perhaps typified those miserable 
creatures whom Dante describes as"a Dio spia- 
centi ed cC nemici sm," — hateful to God and to 
his enemies. Demons convoy a bark-load of the 
damned through the hellish torrent. And on the 
shore what a spectacle ! Bodies starting from their 
graves, some not yet clothed with flesh, some with 
leafy branches growing from their arms, some 
striving to free themselves from the earth into 



TINTORET 241 

which corruption resolved them ; everywhere signs 
of the suddenness and awf illness of that supreme 
moment when the dead shall rise again in the 
forms they bore when alive, and go to the eternal 
abode, of bliss or punishment, for which each has 
fitted himself by his career on earth. 

A parallel has frequently been drawn between 
the genius of Michael Angelo and that of Dante, 
and many have deplored the loss of that portfolio 
in which Michael Angelo is known to have made 
a series of illustrations to The Divine Comedy. 
The resemblance between the supreme Tuscan poet 
and the supreme Tuscan artist seems to me, how- 
ever, to hold only when we limit our view to Dante 
as the author of the Inferno. In energy, in 
intense perception of evil, in unswerving condem- 
nation of sin, in austerity, in appreciation of the 
terror of life, the poet and the painter were indeed 
akin. These are the characteristics which most 
readers associate with Dante's genius, for the rea- 
son that most readers go no farther than the 
Inferno, or are unable to comprehend the more 
spiritual sublimity of the Purgatorio and the 
Paradiso. The Inferno describes torments which 
the most sluggish person can understand, and the 
contrasts of lurid flames and impenetrable gloom 
by which the scenes in hell are diversified are so 
vivid as to require no commentary. We marvel 



242 PORTRAITS 

at the imagination that could traverse unpara- 
lyzed these horrors and dare to report them. But 
Dante's genius stopped not here : it passed in 
review all human nature, from its lowest sinful con- 
dition to that highest excellence when it merges 
with God. Though Evil be a terrible reality, 
Dante saw that Love is even more real, the source 
and the goal of all things, and he proved his uni- 
versality by his power to describe it. And they 
whose imagination is strong enough to follow him 
through the regions of the blessed incline to rank 
the third canticle of his " sacred poem " even 
higher than the first. 

Among painters, Tintoret only has, like Dante, 
swept through the full circuit of human experi- 
ence and aspiration. He has shown us the anguish 
of the damned in his " Last Judgment," and the 
peace and bliss of the blessed in his " Paradise." 
That " The Last Judgment " should be Michael 
Angelo's masterpiece, and that he should have 
painted it on the altar wall of the Pope's favorite 
chapel, are fatally appropriate. In that terrific 
scene, the judge is not Christ, but Michael Angelo 
himself ; a righteous man, who looked out upon 
the iniquities of his time and dared to condemn 
them ; a religious man, who, coming to Rome, the 
religious centre of Christendom, discovered there 
a second Sodom, in which pope, cardinals, and 



TINTORET 243 

bishops were the most shameless offenders ; a pa- 
triotic man, who had fought for the liberty of 
his beloved Florence, and had beheld her, through 
the treachery of some and the apathy of others, 
become the slave of a corrupt master. No wonder 
that the terror and anguish, the depravity and 
hopelessness, of life should have eaten into Mi- 
chael Angelo's soul. As he worked solitarily in 
the Sixtine Chapel, no wonder that a vision of the 
retribution which shall overtake the wicked should 
have possessed his imagination, and transformed 
the artist into the judge. Day by day, a spirit 
mightier than theirs painted the protest which 
Savonarola, Zwingli, Luther, and Calvin had 
preached, — the spirit of a Job united to that of 
an Isaiah. 

Not less appropriate was it that the genius of 
Tintoret and of Venetian art should culminate in 
the representation of Paradise. Of all common- 
wealths, Venice had enjoyed the longest prosper- 
ity ; of all peoples, hers had been the most sensi- 
tive to the joy of life. Even at the end of the 
sixteenth century, when her power abroad had 
been curtailed, and when luxury at home was 
slowly enervating the integrity of her citizens, she 
was still outwardly imposing, magnificent. No 
pope had ever succeeded, either by guile or by 
force, in ravishing her independence. Her imme- 



244 PORTRAITS 

morial glory blazed across the past and irradiated 
the present, as the setting sun spreads an avenue 
of splendor upon the ocean and fills the heavens 
with golden and purple light. Venice was indeed 
the abode of Joy; and Tintoret, at the close of 
a long career, in which he had witnessed all the 
aspects and pondered all the possibilities of human 
life, was filled, like Dante, with hope, and felt Joy 
and Love to be the supreme realities, the everlast- 
ing fulfilments, of mankind's desires. 

If the Last Judgment is an "unimaginable" 
theme, as Mr. Ruskin remarks, how much more 
so is Paradise ! Men have always found it easier 
to represent grief than happiness, villainy than 
virtue, shadows than sunshine ; for the former 
are by their nature limited, and draw their own 
outlines, while the latter have a quality of bound- 
lessness which to define abridges it. Moreover, 
pleasure is oftenest unconscious, and always indi- 
vidual ; pain, on the contrary, is too conscious of 
self, and is manifest in attributes common to many. 
Nevertheless, Tintoret has achieved the seeming 
impossibility of representing, so far as painting 
may, the happiness, unmixed and eternal, of the 
celestial host. 

His painting is known to most visitors at Venice 
as being the largest in the world. The ordinary 
traveler, after reading the dimensions in his guide- 



TINTORET 245 

book, looks up at the canvas, and sees crowds of 
figures and colors grown dark ; wonders what it 
all means, and why the janitor does not sweep 
down the dust and cobwebs ; and then turns away 
to devote equal attention to the black panel where 
Marino Faliero's portrait would be had he not died 
a traitor's death. In like manner, I have seen 
intelligent strangers exhaust the treasures of the 
Acropolis of Athens in a quarter of an hour, and 
return to their hotel to read the last English news- 
paper. But let him who would commune with one 
of the few supreme masterpieces of art sit down 
patiently and reverently before Tintoret's " Para- 
dise," and he will be rewarded by revelations pro- 
portioned to his study. As soon as his eyes grow 
used to the dimness of the hall, the tones of the 
canvas begin to be intelligible to him : it is as if 
he heard a symphony played in a lower key than 
the composer intended ; many of the original ef- 
fects are lost, but harmony interpenetrates and 
unifies all the parts. When he has adjusted his 
eyes to this pitch, he can examine the figures sepa- 
rately ; until, little by little, in what seemed a 
vast confused multitude, he will be aware of the 
presence of an all-controlling order ; and he will 
gaze at last understandingly, as in a vision, upon 
the congregations of heaven as they are unfolded 
in Tintoret's design. 



246 PORTRAITS 

Christ is seated in the central upper part of the 
painting : his left hand rests on a crystal globe ; 
innumerable rays of light illumine his head and 
dart in all directions. Opposite to him is the 
Madonna, above whom sparkles a circlet of stars. 
At Christ's left soars the archangel Michael bear- 
ing the heavenly scales ; at Mary's right is Ga- 
briel with a spray of lilies. A cloud of countless 
cherubs hovers at the feet of the Divine Person- 
age ; while on each side of the archangels, curving 
toward the upper extremities of the canvas, sweep 
companies of seraphim and cherubim, and the 
thrones, principalities, and powers, and angels with 
swords, sceptres, and globes. These form the first 
circle of the angelic host, who from eternity have 
held their station nearest to their Lord. Below 
them is a larger circle, composed of those spirits 
who, by prophecy or preaching, established and 
extended the kingdom of God on earth. On the 
left we see the forerunners of Christ, — David play- 
ing the cithern, Moses holding up the tables of the 
law, Noah with his ark, Solomon, Abraham, and 
the other patriarchs ; and near these we distin- 
guish John the Baptist, who displays a scroll on 
which is written Ecce Agnus. Midway in this 
circle are the Evangelists, the four corners of the 
Christian temple, and the intermediaries between 
the old and new dispensations. Here is Mark 



TINTORET 247 

accompanied by his lion, Luke and his ox, Mat- 
thew with pen in hand, and John with his book 
resting on an eagle. As the line sweeps on, we 
see the early fathers, doctors, and great popes, — 
Peter and Gregory ; Paul, the apostle militant, 
recognizable by his sword ; Jerome, Ambrose, and 
Augustine. In the centre, between Luke and 
Matthew, is the third archangel, Raphael, whose 
clasped hands and upturned face betoken a soul 
rapt in adoration. The third and lowest circle 
is made up of many groups of martyrs and holy 
men and women, the great body of the Church 
of Christ. Among the throng on the left are 
Barbara ; Catherine with her wheel ; Francis of 
Assisi and Dominick, the founders of the great 
religious orders ; Giustina bearing a palm branch ; 
St. George (with banner), Lawrence, Sebastian, 
Agnes, and Stephen, each recognizable by a famil- 
iar emblem. In the centre, along the bottom of 
the painting, hover clusters of worshiping angels ; 
beyond them, more saints, Monica, and Magdalen ; 
then Rachel and a troop of lovely children, and 
Christopher, who carried the boy Christ on his 
shoulder here below, and now carries a globe. At 
last, on the extreme right, we reach the assembly 
of prelates and theologians. 

With this key to the general distribution, the 
student who has Tintoret's " Paradise " before him 



248 PORTRAITS 

can recognize scores of other figures. He will 
compare Tintoret's portrayal of each saint, or pro- 
phet, or martyr with conceptions other painters 
have drawn; and if he reflect that any one of 
these groups, and many of these figures singly, 
would have sufficed to establish the renown of an 
artist less masterly than Tintoret, his astonish- 
ment will swell into admiration, and this into awe, 
when he surveys the work as a whole. Who can 
describe the effect of the innumerable multitude ? 
Cast your eyes almost anywhere upon the canvas, 
and lo ! out of the deeper, distant spaces angelic 
countenances loom up. Forms, though distinctly 
outlined, by some magic seem diaphanous ; and 
the farther your gaze penetrates, the brighter is 
the light which radiates throughout heaven from 
the throne of Christ. Still more marvelous is the 
sense of infinite tranquillity, even in those figures 
which are moving. These are veritable spirits, 
though they have human bodies, and they move or 
rest with equal ease. In this heavenly ether there 
is no effort. Even those rushing seraphim, whose 
majestic pinions seem to beat melody from air in 
their rhythmic flight, suggest a certain grand re- 
pose begotten of motion itself, — a repose akin to 
that produced by the sight of the sea, whose myr- 
iad little waves dance and glisten, or of Niagara, 
whose falling flood seems stationary. The specta- 



TINTORET 249 

tor who has risen to this conception will not fail 
to note the light of a joy, not vehement but pro- 
found, which bathes every face ; and how the ac- 
tion of every individual and of every group is in 
some manner addressed to Christ, and would be 
incomplete but for that divine centre. Christ and 
the Madonna, and the dove of the Holy Spirit 
floating between them, he will look at first and 
turn from last, — the noblest personification of 
ideal manhood and ideal womanhood that ever 
painter expressed. The embodiment and essence 
of Love, which is the author of all good, they are 
enthroned amid the serenity of the highest heaven. 
Round them wheels the inner circle of the archan- 
gels and the angels, the symbols of divine Power, 
Then, in ever-widening circles, the saints and apos- 
tles and prophets, and the elect of every clime and 
condition, all children of Faith and exemplars of 
Charity, float and revolve in bliss forevermore. 
And it needs no strain of the imagination to hear 
the hosannas which the morning stars sing to- 
gether, and all the sons of God shout for joy. 1 

The dark chapel of the Rucellai, in the church 
of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, has a dingy 

1 In the execution of the " Paradise " he was assisted by his son 
Domenieo. If Tintoret was born in 1512, most of the work was 
done after his eightieth year, an indication of physical vigor 



250 PORTRAITS 

altar-piece representing the Virgin and the infant 
Christ. Cimabue painted it; and when it was 
finished the Florentines made a holiday, and bore 
the picture through the streets, amid great rejoi- 
cing, to the chapel where it now hangs. That stiff 
and awkward Madonna, that doll-like Child, were 
hailed by them as the highest achievement of 
painting. For us Cimabue's masterpiece has only 
an historic interest, — we find no charm in its 
Byzantine rigidness. Yet that crude work was 
the seed of Italian painting, and if we follow its 
growth during three centuries we shall be led to 
the " Paradise " of Tintoret, in which are em- 
bodied all the excellences and advances of the 
painter's art. Between that humble beginning and 
that glorious culmination an army of artists and 
myriads of paintings intervene. If we look deep 
enough, we shall be conscious that they were all 
agents whereby a mighty spirit was seeking to ex- 
press itself to man, — a spirit which first appealed 
to human piety through the symbols of religion, 
and which, as its agents acquired skill and reach, 
bodied itself forth in higher images and in con- 
scious forms. The name of that spirit is Beauty, 
never to be found perfect in the outer world, but 

almost unparalleled. A rapid study for another " Paradise," in 
which the groups are arranged on a different plan, reminding- one 
of Dante's description of the Celestial Rose, is now in the Louvre. 



TINTORET 251 

known as it communicates through the senses por- 
tents of itself which the soul sublimes into that 
ideal unity by which the laws of nature and the 
destiny of man are beheld in their highest aspect. 
True Worship, as in the sweet piety of Fra An- 
gelico, led to Beauty ; to Beauty also, along an 
inevitable path, led the pursuit of Truth by the 
sixteenth century masters, latest among whom was 
Tintoret: for Beauty is the final seal and test of 
both Holiness and Truth. 



GIORDANO BRUNO: HIS TRIAL, OPIN- 
IONS, AND DEATH 1 



On Saturday, the 23d of May, 1592, Giovanni 
Mocenigo, son of the late excellent Marcanto- 
nio Mocenigo, addressed to the Father Inquisitor 
of Venice a letter containing charges of heresy 
against Giordano Bruno, the Nolan. Among other 
things, he alleged that Bruno had said " that it is 
a great blasphemy to say, as Catholics do, that 
bread is changed to flesh; that he is hostile to 
the mass ; that no religion satisfies him ; that 
Christ was a good-for-nothing, and did wretched 
tricks to seduce the people, and ought to have 
been hanged ; that there is no separating God into 
persons ; that the world is eternal ; that worlds 
are infinite, and God makes an infinite number of 
them continually ; that Christ wrought apparent 
miracles and was a magician, and so were the 
Apostles ; that Christ showed that he died unwill- 
ingly, and evaded death as long as he could ; that 
there is no punishment of sins; and that souls 

1 First printed in The Atlantic Monthly, March, 1890. 



GIORDANO BRUNO 253 

created by the agency of nature pass from one 
animal into another; and that as the brutes are 
begotten of corruption, so also are men. Further, 
he has denied that the Virgin could have borne a 
child ; he asserted that our Catholic faith is full of 
blasphemies against the majesty of God ; that he 
wished to give himself to the diviner's art, and 
draw the whole world after him ; that St. Thomas 
and all the doctors were blockheads compared 
with himself. Therefore, urged by my conscience 
and by command of my confessor, I have de- 
nounced this Bruno to the Holy Office. Suspect- 
ing that he might depart, I have locked him up in 
one of my rooms, at your requisition ; and because 
I believe him possessed of a demon, I pray you to 
take speedy resolution concerning him." 

Two days later, this Mocenigo, of whom we 
know no more than that he belonged to one of the 
illustrious families of Venice, and was thirty-four 
years of age, added to his accusations : " On that 
day when I had Giordano Bruno locked up, on 
my asking him if he would teach me what he had 
promised, in view of the many courtesies and gifts 
he had had from me, so that I might not accuse 
him of the many wicked words which he had said 
to me, both against our Lord and against the Holy 
Catholic Church, he replied that he was not afraid 
of the Inquisition, because he offended nobody in 



254 PORTRAITS 

living as lie chose ; and then that he did not re- 
member to have said anything bad to me, and that 
even if he had said it he had said it to me alone, 
and that he did not fear that I could harm him in 
this way, and that, even should he come under the 
hand of the Inquisition, it could at the most force 
him to wear his friar's gown again." 

On May 29, Mocenigo, who had in the mean 
time, at the suggestion of the Inquisition, dredged 
in the slimy depths of his memory for other 
charges, informed the Father Inquisitor that he 
had heard Bruno say " that the forms which the 
Church now uses are not those which the Apostles 
used, because the Apostles, by preaching and by 
example of a good life, converted the people, but 
that now he who will not be a Catholic must suffer 
the rod and punishment, because force is used, and 
not love ; that the world could not go on thus, 
because now only ignorance, and not religion, is 
good ; that the Catholic religion pleased him more 
than the others, but that it had need of great for- 
malities, which was not right, but very soon the 
world would see itself reformed, because it was 
impossible that such corruption should endure. 
He told me, too, that now, when the greatest igno- 
rance flourishes which the world ever had, some 
glory in having the greatest knowledge there ever 
was, because they say they know what they do not 



CxIORDANO BRUNO 255 

understand, — which is, that God can be one and 
three, — and that these are impossibilities, igno- 
rances, and most shocking blasphemies against the 
majesty of God. Besides this, he said that he 
liked women hugely, and that the Church com- 
mitted a great sin in calling sin that which is 
according to nature." 

After these charges, we hear no more of this 
latter-day Judas, Giovanni Mocenigo. Honest we 
can hardly deem him, for he confesses that he in- 
tended to betray Bruno long before he did betray 
him, and only delayed till he should gather suffi- 
cient damning evidence against him. And so we 
dismiss him to join the despicable crew of those 
who were traitors to their lords and benefactors. 

The Inquisition examined four other witnesses. 
Two booksellers, Ciotto and Bertano, deposed that 
they had known Bruno at Frankfort-on-the-Main, 
whither they went to attend the famous book- 
fairs ; that they had not heard him say aught 
which caused them to believe he was not a Catho- 
lic and a good Christian; but that he had the 
reputation of being a philosopher, who spent his 
time in writing and " in meditating new things." 
Andrea Morosini, a gentleman of noble birth, tes- 
tified that during the recent months Bruno had 
been at his house, whither divers gentlemen and 
also prelates were wont to meet to discuss letters, 



256 PORTRAITS 

and principally philosophy ; but that he had never 
inferred from Bruno's remarks that he held opin- 
ions contrary to the faith. Finally, Era Domenico 
da Nocera, of the Order of Preachers, deposed that 
"one day, near the feast of Pentecost, as I was 
coming out of the sacristy of the church of John 
and Paul, a layman, whom I did not know, bowed 
to me, and presently engaged in conversation. 
He said he was a friar of our province of Naples, 
a man of letters ; Fra Giordano of Nola, his name. 
So we sought out a retired part of the aforesaid 
church. Then he told me how he had renounced 
the gown ; of the many kingdoms he had trav- 
ersed, and the royal courts, with his important 
exercises in letters ; but that he had always lived 
as a Catholic. And I asking him what he was do- 
ing in Venice, and how he was living, he said that 
he had been in Venice but very few days, and was 
living comfortably ; that he proposed to get tran- 
quillity and write a book he had in his head, and 
to present it to his Holiness, for the quiet of his 
conscience and in order to be allowed to remain in 
Rome, and there devote himself to literary work, 
to show his ability, and perhaps to obtain a lec- 
tureship." 

So far as we know, the Holy Office examined 
no other witnesses. That tribunal of the Inqui- 
sition at Venice was composed, in 1592, of the 



GIORDANO BRUNO 257 

Apostolic Nuncio, Monsignor Taberna ; of the Pa- 
triarch, Monsignor Lorenzo Priuli ; of the Father 
Inquisitor, Giovanni Gabriele da Saluzzo, a Do- 
minican; and of three nobles appointed by the 
State, and called the savii alV eresia (sages or 
experts in heresy), who reported all proceedings 
to the Doge and Senate, and stopped the delibera- 
tions when they deemed them contrary to the laws 
and customs of the State, or to the secret instruc- 
tions they had received. These three sages were, 
in that year, Luigi Foscari, Sebastian Barbarigo, 
and Tomaso Morosini. 

Before this tribunal, which sat at the prison of 
the Inquisition, appeared the prisoner, Giordano 
Bruno, on Tuesday, May 26, 1592. He was a 
small, lean man, in aspect about forty years old, 
with a slight chestnut beard. On being bidden to 
speak, he began : — 

" I will speak the truth. Several times I have 
been threatened with being brought to this Holy 
Office, and I have always held it as a jest, because 
I am ready to give an account of myself. While 
at Frankfort last year, I had two letters from 
Signor Giovanni Mocenigo, in which he invited 
me to come to Venice, as he wished me to teach 
him the art of memory and invention, promising 
to treat me well, and that I should be satisfied 
with him. And so I came, seven or eight months 



258 PORTRAITS 

ago. I have taught him various terms pertaining 
to these two sciences ; living at first outside of his 
house, and latterly in his own house. And, as it 
seemed to me that I had done and taught him as 
much as was necessary, and as was my duty in 
respect to the things he had sought me for, and 
deliberating, therefore, to return to Frankfort to 
publish certain of my works, I took leave of him 
last Thursday, so as to depart. He, hearing this, 
and doubting lest I wished to leave his house to 
teach other persons the very sciences I had taught 
him and others, rather than to go to Frankfort, as 
I announced, was most urgent to detain me ; but 
I none the less insisting on going, he began at first 
to complain that I had not taught him all I had 
agreed, and then to threaten me by saying that, if 
I would not remain of my own accord, he would find 
means to compel me. And the following night, 
which was Friday, seeing me firm in my resolution 
of going, and that I had put my things in order, 
and arranged to send them to Frankfort, he came, 
when I was in bed, with the pretext of wishing to 
speak to me ; and after he had entered, there fol- 
lowed his servant Bortolo, with five or six others, 
who were, as I believed, gondoliers of the sort 
near by. And they made me get out of bed, and 
conducted me up to an attic, and locked me in 
there, Master Giovanni saying that, if I would re- 



GIORDANO BRUNO 259 

main and instruct him in the terms of memory and 
of geometry, as he had wished hitherto, he would 
set me at liberty ; otherwise, something disagree- 
able would happen to me. And I replying all 
along that I thought I had taught him enough, 
and more than I was bound, and that I did not 
deserve to be treated in that fashion, he left me 
till the next day, when there came a captain, ac- 
companied by certain men whom I did not know, 
and had them lead me down to a storeroom on 
the ground-floor of the house, where they left me 
till night. Then came another captain, with his 
assistants, and conducted me to the prison of this 
Holy Office, whither I believe I have been brought 
by the work of the aforesaid Ser Giovanni, who, 
indignant for the reason I have given, has, I think, 
made some accusation against me. 

" My name is Giordano, of the Bruno family, 
of the city of Nola, twelve miles from Naples. 
I was born and brought up in that town ; my pro- 
fession has been, and is, that of letters and every 
science. My father's name was Giovanni, my 
mother's Fraulissa Savolina; he being a soldier 
by profession, who died at the same time with my 
mother. I am about forty-four years old, being 
born, according to what my people told me, in the 
year 1548. From my fourteenth year I was at 
Naples, to learn humanity, logic, and dialectics, 



260 PORTRAITS 

and I used to attend the public lectures of a cer- 
tain Sarnese ; I heard logic privately from an 
Augustinian father, called Fra Theofilo da Vai- 
rano, who subsequently lectured on metaphysics at 
Eome. When I was fourteen or fifteen, I put on 
the habit of St. Dominick at the convent of St. 
Dominick at Naples. After the year of probation 
I was admitted to the profession, and then I was 
promoted to holy orders and to the priesthood in 
due time, and sang my first mass at Campagna, 
a town in the same kingdom. I lived there in a 
convent of the same order, called St. Bartholomew, 
and continued in this garb of St. Dominick, cele- 
brating mass and the divine offices, and obedience 
to the superiors of the said order and of the priors 
of monasteries, till 1576, the year after the Jubi- 
lee. I was then at Eome, in the convent of the 
Minerva, under Master Sisto de Luca, procurator 
of the order, whither I had come because at Naples 
I had been brought to trial twice : the first time 
for having given away certain representations 
and images of the saints, and kept only a crucifix, 
wherefore I was charged with spurning the images 
of the saints ; and, again, for saying to a novice, 
who was reading The History of the Seven Joys 
in verse, what business he had with such a book, — 
to throw it aside, and to read sooner some other 
work, like The Lives of the Holy Fathers ; and 



GIORDANO BRUNO 261 

this case was renewed against me at the time I 
went to Rome, together with other charges, which 
I do not know. On this account I left the order, 
and put off the gown. 

" I went to Noli, in Genoese territory, and stayed 
there about four months, teaching small boys gram- 
mar, and reading lectures on the sphere [astro- 
nomy] to certain gentlemen ; then I went away, 
first to Savona, where I tarried about a fortnight, 
and thence to Turin. Not finding entertainment 
there to my taste, I came to Venice by the Po, 
and lived a month and a half in the Frezzaria, in 
the lodging of a man employed at the Arsenal, 
whose name I do not know. Whilst I was here, 
I had printed this work [On the Signs of the 
Times] , to make a little money for my support ; 
I showed it first to Father Remigio de Fiorenza. 
Departing hence, I went to Padua, where I found 
some Dominican fathers, acquaintances of mine, 
who persuaded me to wear the habit again, even 
if I should not choose to return to the order ; for 
it seemed to them more proper to wear that habit 
than not. With this view I went to Bergamo, 
and had made a garment of cheap white cloth, 
and over it I put the scapular, which I had kept 
when I left Rome. Thus attired I set out for 
Lyons ; and at Chambery, going to lodge with the 
order, and being very decently entertained, and 



262 PORTRAITS 

talking about this with an Italian father who was 
there, he said to me, ' Be warned, for you will not 
meet with any sort of friendliness in these parts ; 
and you will find less the farther you go.' So I 
set out for Geneva. There I lodged at the hos- 
telry ; and, a little after my arrival, the Marquis 
de Vico, a Neapolitan who was in that city, asked 
me who I was, and whether I had gone there to 
settle and to profess the religion of that place. 
I replied to him, after giving an account of myself 
and the reason why I had left the order, that I 
did not intend to profess that religion, because 
I did not know what it was ; and that therefore I 
wished to abide there to live in liberty and to be 
safe, rather than for any other purpose. Being 
persuaded to put off that habit in any case, I took 
these clothes, and had a pair of hose made, and 
other things; and the marquis, with some other 
Italians, gave me a sword, hat, cloak, and other 
necessary articles, and, in order that I might sup- 
port myself, they procured proof-reading for me. 
I kept to that work about two months, going, how- 
ever, sometimes to preaching and sermons, whether 
of the Italians or of the French who lectured and 
preached there : among others, I heard more than 
once Nicolo Balbani, of Lucca, who read the Epis- 
tles of St. Paul, and preached on the Evangelists. 
But when I was told that I could not stay long in 



GIORDANO BRUNO 263 

that place unless I should accept its religion, be- 
cause I would have no employment from them, 
and finding, too, that I could not earn enough to 
live on, I went thence to Toulouse, where there is 
a famous university. Having become acquainted 
with some intelligent persons, I was asked to lec- 
ture on the sphere to divers students, which I did 
— with other lectures on philosophy — for perhaps 
six months. At this point, the post of • ordinary ' 
lecturer in philosophy, which is filled by compe- 
tition, falling vacant, I took my doctor's degree, 
presented myself for the said competition, was 
admitted and approved, and lectured in that city 
two years continuously on the text of Aristotle's 
De Anima and other philosophical works. Then, 
on account of the Civil Wars, I quitted and went 
to Paris, where, in order to make myself known, 
and to give proof of myself, I undertook an ' ex- 
traordinary ' lectureship, and read thirty lectures, 
choosing for subject Thirty Divine Attributes, 
taken from the first part of St. Thomas. Later, 
being requested to accept an c ordinary ' lecture- 
ship, I would not, because public lecturers in that 
city go generally to mass and the other divine 
offices, and I have always avoided this, knowing 
that I was excommunicated because I had quitted 
my order and habit; and although I had that 
'ordinary' lectureship at Toulouse, I was not 



264 PORTRAITS 

forced to go to mass, as I should have been at 
Paris. But conducting the ' extraordinary ' there, 
I acquired such a name that the king, Henry III, 
sent for me, and wished to know whether my 
memory was natural or due to magic art. I satis- 
fied him, both by what I said, and proved to him, 
that it was not by magic art, but by science. 
After this I published a work on the memory, 
under the title De Umbris Idearum, which I 
dedicated to his Majesty, — on which occasion he 
made me ' lecturer extraordinary,' with a pension ; 
and I continued to read in that city perhaps five 
years, when, on account of the tumults which arose, 
I took my leave, and with letters from the king 
himself I went into England to reside with his 
ambassador, Michael de Castelnau. In his house 
I lived as a gentleman. I stayed in England 
two years and a half, and when the ambassador 
returned to France I accompanied him to Paris, 
where I remained another year. Having quitted 
Paris on account of the tumults, I betook myself 
to Germany, stopping first at Mayence, an archi- 
episcopal city, for twelve days. Finding neither 
here nor at Wiirzburg, a town a little way off, any 
entertainment, I went to Wittenberg, in Saxony, 
where I found two factions, — one of philosophers, 
who were Calvinists, the other of theologians, who 
were Lutherans. Among the latter was Alberigo 



GIORDANO BRUNO 265 

Gentile, whom I had known in England, a law- 
professor, who befriended me and introduced me to 
read lectures on the Org anon of Aristotle ; which 
I did, with other lectures in philosophy, for two 
years. At that time, the son of the old Duke hav- 
ing succeeded his father, who was a Lutheran, 
and the son being a Calvinist, he began to favor 
the party opposed to those who favored me ; so 
I departed, and went to Prague, and stayed six 
months. Whilst there, I published a book on 
geometry, which I presented to the Emperor, from 
whom I had a gift of three hundred thalers. With 
this money, having quitted Prague, I spent a year 
at the Julian Academy in Brunswick; and the 
death of the Duke x happening at that time, I 
delivered an oration at his funeral, in competition 
with many others from the university, on which 
account his son and successor bestowed eighty 
crowns of those parts upon me ; and I went away 
to Frankfort to publish two books, — one JDe 
Minimo, and the other De Numero, Monade, et 
Figura, etc. I stayed about six months at Frank- 
fort, lodging in the convent of the Carmelites, — 
a place assigned to me by the publisher, who 
was obliged to provide me a lodging. And from 
Frankfort, having been invited, as I have said, by 

1 " Who was a heretic " is written on the margin of the original 
proces-verbal. 



266 PORTRAITS 

Ser Giovanni Mocenigo, I came to Venice seven 
or eight months ago, where what has since hap- 
pened I have already related. I was going anew 
to Frankfort to print other works of mine, and 
one in particular on The Seven Liberal Arts, with 
the intention of taking these and some other of 
my published works which I approve — for some 
I do not approve — and of going to Kome to lay 
them at the feet of his Holiness, who, I have un- 
derstood, loves the virtuous, and to put my case 
before him, with a view to obtain absolution from 
excesses, and permission to live in the clerical 
garb outside of the order. ... I said I wish to 
present myself at the feet of his Holiness with 
some of my approved works, as I have some I do 
not approve, meaning by that that some of the 
works written by me and sent to the press I do 
not approve, because in them I have spoken and 
discussed too philosophically, unbecomingly, and 
not enough like a good Christian ; and in par- 
ticular I know that in some of these works I 
have taught and maintained philosophically things 
which ought to be attributed to the power, wis- 
dom, and goodness of God according to the Chris- 
tian faith ; founding my doctrine on sense and 
reason, and not on faith. So much for them in 
general ; concerning particulars, I refer to the 
writings, for I do not now recall a single article or 



GIORDANO BRUNO 267 

particular doctrine I may have taught, but I will 
reply according as I shall be questioned and as 
I shall remember. . . . 

" The subject of all my books, speaking broadly, 
is philosophy. In all of them I have always de- 
fined in the manner of philosophy and according 
to principles and natural light, not having most 
concern as to what, according to faith, ought to 
be believed ; and I think there is nothing in them 
from which it can be judged that I professedly 
wish to impugn religion rather than to exalt phi- 
losophy, although I may have set forth many impi- 
ous matters based on my natural light. 

" I have taught nothing directly against Catho- 
lic Christian religion, although [I may have done 
so] indirectly ; as was judged at Paris, where, 
however, I was allowed to hold certain disputes 
under the title of One Hundred and Twenty Arti- 
ticles against the Peripatetics and Other Vulgar 
Philosophers (printed with permission of the su- 
periors) ; as it was permitted to treat them by the 
way of natural principles, without prejudice to the 
truth according to the light of faith, in which man- 
ner the books of Aristotle and Plato may be read 
and taught, which are in similar fashion, indirectly 
contrary to faith, — nay, much more so than the 
articles propounded and defended by me in the 
manner of philosophy : all these can be known 



268 PORTRAITS 

from what is printed in my last Latin books from 
Frankfort, entitled De Minimo, De Monade, de 
Immenso et Innumerabilibus, and in part in De 
Compositione Imaginum. In these particularly 
you can see my intention and what I have held, 
which is, in a word, I believe in an infinite uni- 
verse, — that is, the effect of infinite divine power ; 
because I esteemed it unworthy of the divine good- 
ness and power that, when it could produce besides 
this world another, and infinite others, it should 
produce a single finite world : so I have declared 
that there is an infinite number of particular 
worlds similar to this of the earth, which, with 
Pythagoras, I consider a star, like which is the 
moon, other planets, and other stars, which are in- 
finite ; and that all these bodies are worlds, with- 
out number, which make up the infinite university 
in infinite space, and we call this the infinite uni- 
verse, in which are numberless worlds : so that 
there is a double infinitude, that of the greatness 
of the universe, and that of the multitude of the 
worlds, — by which indirectly it is meant to assail 
the truth according to faith. 

" Moreover, in this universe I place a universal 
Providence, in virtue of which everything lives, 
vegetates, moves, and reaches its perfection ; and I 
understand Providence in two ways : one in which 
it is present as the soul in all matter, and all in 



GIORDANO BRUNO 269 

any part whatsoever, and this I call Nature, the 
shadow and footprint of the Deity ; the other in 
the ineffable way with which God, by essence, pre- 
sence, and power, is in all things and over all 
things, not as a part, but as Soul, in a manner 
indescribable. In the Deity I understand all the 
attributes to be one and the same substance, — 
just as theologians and the greatest philosophers 
hold ; I perceive these attributes, power, wisdom, 
and goodness, or will, intelligence, and love, by 
means of which things have, first, being (by reason 
of the will), then, orderly and distinct being (by 
reason of the intelligence), and third, concord and 
symmetry (by reason of love) ; this I believe is in 
all and above all, as nothing is without participa- 
tion in being, and being is not without its essence, 
just as nothing is beautiful without the presence 
of beauty ; so nothing can be exempt from the 
divine presence. In this manner, by use of rea- 
son, and not by use of substantial [theological] 
truth, I discern distinctions in the Deity. 

" Regarding the world as caused and produced, 
I meant that, as all being depends on the First 
Cause, I did not shrink from the term ' creation ; ' 
which I believe even Aristotle expressed, saying 
that God is, on whom the world and Nature are 
dependent; so that, according to the explanation 
of St. Thomas, be the world either eternal or tern- 



270 PORTRAITS 

poral according to its nature, it is dependent on 
the First Cause, and nothing exists in it independ- 
ently. 

" Next, concerning that which belongs to faith 
— not speaking in the manner of philosophy — 
about the divine persons, that wisdom and that son 
of the mind, called by philosophers intellect and 
by theologians the Word, which we are to believe 
took upon itself human flesh, I, standing within 
the bounds of philosophy, have not understood 
it ; but I have doubted, and with inconstant faith 
maintained, — not that I recall having shown a 
sign of it in writing or in speech, excepting as in 
other things indirectly one might gather from my 
belief and profession concerning those things which 
can be proved by the reason and deduced from 
natural light. And then concerning the divine 
spirit in a third person, I have been able to com- 
prehend nothing in the way in which one ought to 
believe ; but in the Pythagorean way, conformable 
to that way which Solomon points out, I have 
understood it to be the soul of the universe, or 
assistant in the universe, according to that saying 
in the Wisdom of Solomon, ' The Spirit of the 
Lord filleth the world ; and that which containeth 
all things hath knowledge of the voice.' 1 This 
seems to me to agree to the Pythagorean doc- 
1 Chap. I, v, 7. 



GIORDANO BRUNO 271 

trine explained by Vergil in this passage of the 
^Eneid ; — 

' Principio coelum ac terras camposque liquentes, 
Lucentemque globum Lunae Titaniaque astra, 
Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus 
Mens agitat molem.' 1 

" I teach in my philosophy that from this spirit, 
which is called the Life of the Universe, the life 
and soul of everything which has life and soul 
springs ; that it is immortal, just as bodies, so 
far as concerns their substance, are all immortal, 
death being nothing else than division and coming 
together ; this doctrine seems to be expressed in 
IUcclesiastes, where it says, ' There is no new thing 
under the sun. Is there anything whereof it may 
be said, See, this is new ? ' and so on." 

Inquisitor. " Have you held, do you hold and 
believe, the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, 
one in essence, but distinct in person, as is taught 
and believed by the Catholic Church ? " 

Bruno. " Speaking as a Christian, and accord- 
ing to theology, and as every faithful Christian 
and Catholic ought to believe, I have indeed L had 
doubts about the name * person ' as applied to the 
Son and the Holy Spirit ; not understanding these 
two persons to be distinct from the Father, except 
as I have said above, speaking in the manner of 
i Book VI, 724r-27. 



272 PORTRAITS 

philosophy, and assigning the intelligence of the 
Father to the Son, and his love to the Holy Spirit, 
but without comprehending this word 'persons,' 
which in St. Augustine is declared to be not an 
ancient but a new word, and of his time : and I 
have held this opinion since I was eighteen years 
old till now, but in fact I have never denied, nor 
taught, nor written, but only doubted in my own 
mind, as I have said." 

Inquisitor. " Have you believed, and do you 
believe, all that the Holy Mother Catholic Church 
teaches, believes, and holds about the First Person, 
and have you ever in any wise doubted concerning 
the First Person ? " 

Bruno. " I have believed and held undoubtingly 
all that every faithful Christian ought to believe 
and hold concerning the First Person. Regarding 
the Second Person, I declare that I have held it 
to be really one in essence with the First, and so 
the Third ; because, being indivisible in essence, 
they cannot suffer inequality, for all the attributes 
which belong to the Father belong also to the Son 
and Holy Spirit : only I have doubted, as I said 
above, how this Second Person could become incar- 
nate and could have suffered ; nevertheless I have 
never denied nor taught that, and if I have said 
anything about this Second Person, I have said it 
in quoting the opinions of others, like Arius and 



GIORDANO BRUNO 273 

Sabellius and other followers of theirs. I will tell 
what I must have said, and which may have 
caused scandal and suspicion, as was set down in 
the first charges against me at Naples, to wit : I 
declared that the opinion of Arius seemed less 
pernicious than it was commonly esteemed and un- 
derstood, because it is commonly understood that 
Arius meant to say that the Word is the first thing 
created by the Father; whereas I declared that 
Arius said that the Word was neither creator nor 
creature, but midway between creator and crea- 
ture, — as the word is midway between the speaker 
and the thing spoken, — and therefore that the 
Word was the first-born before all creatures, not 
by which, but through which everything has been 
created, not to which but through which everything 
is referred and returns to the ultimate end, which 
is the Father. I exaggerated on this theme so that 
I was regarded with suspicion. I recall further 
to have said here in Venice that Arius did not 
intend to say that Christ, that is the Word, is a 
creature, but a mediator in the sense I have stated. 
I do not remember the precise place, whether at a 
druggist's or bookseller's, but I know I said this 
in one of these shops, arguing with certain priests 
who made a show of theology : I know not who 
they were, nor should I recognize them if I saw 
them. To make my statement more clear, I repeat 



274 PORTRAITS 

that I have held there is one God, distinguished as 
Father, as Word, and as Love, which is the Divine 
Spirit, and that all these three are one God in 
essence ; but I have not understood, and have 
doubted, how- these three can get the name of 
persons, for it did not seem to me that this name 
of person was applicable to the Deity ; and I sup- 
ported myself in this by the words of St. Augus- 
tine, who says, ' Cum formidine proferimus hoe 
nomen personae, quando loquimur de divinis, et 
necessitate coacti utimur ; ' besides which, in the 
Old and New Testaments I have not found nor 
read this expression nor this form of speech." 

Inquisitor. "Having doubted the Incarnation 
of the Word, what has been your opinion about 
Christ?" 

Bruno. " I have thought that the divinity of 
the Word was present in the humanity of Christ 
individually, and I have not been able to under- 
stand that it was a union like that of soul and 
body, but a presence of such a kind that we could 
truly say of this man that he was God, and of this 
divinity that it was man; because between sub- 
stance infinite and divine and substance finite and 
human there is no proportion as between soul and 
body, or any other two things which can make up 
one existence ; and I believe, therefore, that St. 
Augustine shrank from applying that word ' per- 



GIORDANO BRUNO 275 

son ' to this case : so that, in conclusion, I think, 
as regards my doubt of the Incarnation, I have 
wavered concerning its ineffable meaning, but not 
against the Holy Scripture, which says ' the Word 
is made flesh.' " 

Inquisitor. " What opinion have you had con- 
cerning the miracles, acts, and death of Christ ? " 

Bruno. " I have held what the Holy Catholic 
Church holds, although I have said of the mira- 
cles that, while they are testimony of the divinity 
[of Christ] , the evangelical law is, in my opinion, 
a stronger testimony, because the Lord said 'he 
shall do greater than these ' miracles ; and it oc- 
curred to me that whilst others, like the Apostles, 
wrought miracles, so that, in their external effect, 
they seemed like those wrought by him, Christ 
worked by his own virtue, and the Apostles by 
virtue of another's power. Therefore I have 
maintained that the miracles of Christ were di- 
vine, true, real, and not apparent ; nor have I ever 
thought, said, nor believed the contrary. 

" I have never spoken of the sacrifice of the 
mass, nor of transubstantiation, except in the way 
the Holy Church holds. I have believed, and do 
believe, that the transubstantiation of the bread 
and wine into the body and blood of Christ takes 
place really and in substance." 

Inquisitor. " Did you ever say that Christ was 



276 PORTRAITS 

not God, but a good-for-nothing, and that, doing 
wretched works, he ought to have expected to be 
put to death, although he showed that he died un- 
willingly ? " 

Bruno. " I am astonished that this question is 
put to me, for I have never had such opinions, nor 
said such a thing, nor thought aught contrary to 
what I said just now about the person of Christ, 
which is that I believe what the Holy Mother 
Church believes. I know not how these things 
are imputed to me." At this he seemed much 
grieved. 

Inquisitor. " In reasoning about the Incarna- 
tion of the Word, what have you held concern- 
ing the delivery of the said Word by the Virgin 
Mary?" 

Bruno. " That it was conceived of the Holy 
Ghost, born of Mary as Virgin ; and when any one 
shall find that I have said or maintained the con- 
trary, I will submit myself to any punishment." 

Inquisitor. " Do you know the import and 
effect of the sacrament of penance ? " 

Bruno. " I know that it is ordained to purge 
our sins ; and never, never have I talked on this 
subject, but have always held that whosoever dies 
in mortal sin will be damned. It is about sixteen 
years since I presented myself to a confessor, ex- 
cept on two occasions : once at Toulouse, to a 



GIORDANO BRUNO 277 

Jesuit, and another time in Paris, to another 
Jesuit, whilst I was treating, through the Bishop 
of Bergamo, then nuncio at Paris, and through 
Don Bernardin de Mendoza, to reenter my order, 
with a view to confessing ; and they said that, 
being an apostate, they could not absolve me, and 
that I could not go to the holy offices, wherefore 
I have abstained from the confessional and from 
going to mass. I have intended, however, to 
emerge some time from these censures, and to live 
like a Christian and a priest ; and when I have 
sinned I have always asked pardon of God, and 
I would also willingly have confessed if I could, 
because I have firmly believed that impenitent sin- 
ners are damned." 

Inquisitor. "You hold, therefore, that souls 
are immortal, and that they do not pass from one 
body into another, as we have information you 
have said ? " 

Bruno. " I have held, and hold, that souls are 
immortal, and that they are subsisting substances, 
that is rational souls, and that, speaking as a 
Catholic, they do not pass from one body into an- 
other, but go either to paradise or to purgatory, or 
to hell ; but I have, to be sure, argued, following 
philosophical reasons, that as the soul subsists in 
the body, and is non-existent in the body [that is, 
not an integral part of it], it may, in the same 



278 PORTRAITS 

way that it exists in one, exist in another, and pass 
from one to another ; and if this be not true, it at 
least seems like the opinion of Pythagoras." 

Inquisitor. " Have you busied yourself much 
in theological studies, and are you instructed in 
the Catholic resolutions ? " 

Bruno. " Not a great deal, having devoted my- 
self to philosophy, which has been my profession." 

Inquisitor. " Have you ever vituperated the 
theologians and their decisions, calling their doc- 
trine vanity and other similar opprobrious names ? " 

Bruno. " Speaking of the theologians who in- 
terpret Holy Scripture, I have never spoken other- 
wise than well. I may have said something about 
some one in particular, and blamed him, — some 
Lutheran theologian, for instance, or other here- 
tics, — but I have always esteemed the Catholic 
theologians, especially St. Thomas, whose works I 
have ever kept by me, read, and studied, and hon- 
ored them, and I have them at present, and hold 
them very dear." 

Inquisitor. " Which have you reckoned hereti- 
cal theologians ? " 

Bruno. " All those who profess theology, but 
who do not agree with the Roman Church, I have 
esteemed heretics. I have read books by Melanch- 
thon, Luther, Calvin, and by other heretics beyond 
the mountains, not to learn their doctrine nor to 



GIORDANO BRUNO 279 

avail myself of it, for I deemed them more igno- 
rant than myself, but I read them out of curiosity. 
I despise these heretics and their doctrines, be- 
cause they do not merit the name of theologians, 
but of pedants ; for the Catholic ecclesiastical doc- 
tors, on the contrary, I have the esteem I should." 

Inquisitor. " How, then, have you dared to say 
that the Catholic faith is full of blasphemies, and 
without merit in God's sight ? " 

Bruno. " Never have I said such a thing, 
neither in writing, nor in word, nor in thought." 

Inquisitor. " What things are needful for sal- 
vation ? " 

Bruno. " Faith, hope, and charity. Good 
works are also necessary ; or it will suffice not to 
do to others that which we do not wish to have 
done to us, and to live morally." 

Inquisitor. " Have you ever denounced the 
Catholic religious orders, especially for having 
revenues ? " 

Bruno. " I have never denounced one of them 
for any cause ; on the contrary, I have found fault 
when the clergy, lacking income, are forced to 
beg ; and I was surprised, in France, when I saw 
certain priests going about the streets to beg, with 
open missals." 

Inquisitor. " Did you ever say that the life of 
the clergy does not conform to that of the Apos- 
tles ? " 



280 PORTRAITS 

Bruno. " I have never said nor held such a 
thing ! " And as he said this he raised his hands, 
and looked about astonished. In answer to an- 
other question, he continued : " I have said that 
the Apostles achieved more by their preaching, 
good life, examples, and miracles than force can 
accomplish, which is used against those who refuse 
to be Catholics ; without condemning this method, 
I approve the other." 

Inquisitor. "Have you ever said that the mira- 
cles wrought by Christ and the Apostles were ap- 
parent miracles, done by magic art, and not real ; 
and that you have enough spirit to work the same 
or greater, and wished finally to make the whole 
world run after you ? " 

Bruno (lifting up both his hands). " What is 
this ? What man has invented this devilishness ? 
I have never said such a thing, nor has it entered 
my imagination. O God, what is this? I had 
rather be dead than that this should be proposed 
to me ! " 

Inquisitor. " What opinion have you of the 
sin of the flesh, outside of the sacrament of matri- 
mony ?" 

Bruno. " I have spoken of this sometimes, say- 
ing, in general, that it was a lesser sin than the 
others, but that adultery was the chief of carnal 
sins, whereas the other was lighter, and almost 



GIORDANO BRUNO 281 

venial. This, indeed, I have said, but I know and 
acknowledge to have spoken in error, because I 
remember what St. Paul says. However, I spoke 
thus through levity, being with others and discuss- 
ing worldly topics. I have never said that the 
Church made a great mistake in constituting this 
a sin. . . . 

" I hold it a pious and holy thing, as the Church 
ordains, to observe fasts and abstain from meat 
and prohibited food on the days she appoints, and 
that every faithful Catholic is bound to observe 
them ; which I too would have done except for the 
reason given above ; and God help me if I have 
ever eaten meat out of contempt [for the Church]. 
As for having listened to heretics preach, or lec- 
ture, or dispute, I did so several times from curios- 
ity and to see their methods and eloquence, rather 
than from delight or enjoyment ; indeed, after the 
reading or sermon, at the time when they distrib- 
uted bread according to their form of commun- 
ion, I went away about my business, and never 
partook of their bread nor observed their rites.' , 

Inquisitor. " From your explanation of the 
Incarnation there follows another grave error, 
namely, that in Christ there was a human person- 
ality." 

Bruno. " I recognize and concede that these 
and other improprieties may follow, and I have 



282 PORTRAITS 

stated this opinion, not to defend, bnt only to 
explain it ; and I confess my error such and so 
great as it is ; and had I applied my mind to this 
adduced impropriety and to others deducible from 
it, I should not have reached these conclusions, 
because I may have erred in the premises, but 
certainly not in the conclusions." 

Inquisitor. "Do you remember to have said 
that men are begotten of corruption, like the other 
animals, and that this has been since the Deluge 
down to the present? " 

Bruno. " I believe this is the opinion of Lucre- 
tius. I have read it and heard it talked about, 
but I do not recall having referred to it as my 
opinion ; nor have I ever believed it. When I 
reasoned about it, I did so referring it to Lucre- 
tius, Epicurus, and their similars, and it is not 
possible to deduce it from my philosophy, as will 
readily appear to any one who reads that." 

Inquisitor. " Have you ever had any book of 
conjurations or of similar superstitious arts, or 
have you said you wished to devote yourself to the 
art of divination ? " 

Bruno. " As for books of conjurations, I have 
always despised them, never had them by me, nor 
attributed any efficacy to them. As for divina- 
tion, particularly that relating to judicial astro- 
logy, I have said, and even proposed, to study it 



GIORDANO BRUNO 283 

to see if there is any truth or conformity in it. I 
have communicated my purpose to several persons, 
remarking that, as I have examined all parts of 
philosophy, and inquired into all science except 
the judicial, when I had convenience and leisure 
I wish to have a look at that, which I have not 
done yet." 

Inquisitor. " Have you said that the opera- 
tions of the world are guided by Fate, denying the 
providence of God ? " 

Bruno. " This cannot be found either in my 
words or in my writings ; on the contrary, you 
will find, in my books, that I set forth providence 
and free will. ... I have praised many heretics 
and also heretic princes, but not as heretics, but 
only for the moral virtues they possessed. In 
particular, in my book De la Causa, Principio et 
Uno, I praise the Queen of England, and call her 
' divine ; ' not as an attribute of religion, but as 
a certain epithet which the ancients used also to 
bestow on princes ; and in England, where I then 
was and wrote that book, it is customary to give 
this title ' divine ' to the Queen ; and I was all the 
more persuaded to name her thus because she 
knew me, for I often went with the ambassador to 
court. I acknowledge to have erred in praising 
this lady, who is a heretic, and especially in attrib- 
uting to her the epithet ' divine.' "... 



284 PORTRAITS 

Inquisitor. " Are the errors and heresies com- 
mitted and confessed by you still embraced, or do 
you detest them ? " 

Bruno. "All the errors I have committed, 
down to this very day, pertaining to Catholic life 
and regular profession, and all the heresies I have 
held and the doubts I have had concerning the 
Catholic faith and the questions determined by the 
Holy Church, I now detest ; and I abhor, and re- 
pent me of having done, held, said, believed, or 
doubted of anything that was not Catholic ; and I 
pray this holy tribunal that, knowing my infirmi- 
ties, it will please to accept me into the bosom of 
the Holy Church, providing me with remedies op- 
portune for my safety and using me with mercy." 

Bruno was then re-questioned concerning the 
reason why he broke away from his order. He 
repeated, in substance, the testimony already given, 
adding that his baptismal name was Philip. 

Inquisitor. " Have you, in these parts, any 
enemy or other malevolent person, and who is he, 
and for what cause ? " 

Bruno. " I have no enemy in these parts, unless 
it be Ser Giovanni Mocenigo and his followers and 
servants, by whom I have beeD more grievously 
offended than by any other man living, because he 
has assassinated me in my life, in my honor, and 
in my goods, — having imprisoned me in his own 



GIORDANO BRUNO 285 

house, confiscating all my writings, books, and 
other property ; and he has done this, not only be- 
cause he wished me to teach him all I knew, but 
also because he wished that I should not teach it 
to any one else ; and he has always threatened my 
life and honor if I did not teach him what I 
knew." 

Inquisitor. "Your apostacy of so many years 
renders you very suspicious to the Holy Faith, 
since you have so long spurned her censures, 
whence it may happen that you have held sinister 
opinions in other matters than those you have 
deposed; you may, therefore, and ought now to 
purify your conscience." 

Bruno. " It seems to me that the articles I have 
confessed, and all that which I have expressed in 
my writings, show sufficiently the importance of 
my excess, and therefore I confess it, whatsoever 
may be its extent, and I acknowledge to have 
given grave cause for the suspicion of heresy. 
And I add to this that I have always had re- 
morse in my conscience, and the purpose of reform- 
ing, although I was seeking to effect this in the 
easiest and surest way, still shrinking from going 
back to the straitness of regular obedience. . . . 
And I was at this very time putting in order cer- 
tain writings to propitiate his Holiness, so that I 
might be allowed to live more independently than 
is possible as an ecclesiastic. ... 



286 PORTEAITS 

" Beginning with my accuser, who I believe is 
Signor Giovanni Mocenigo, I think no one will be 
found who can say that I have taught false and 
heretical doctrine ; and I have no suspicion that 
any one else can accuse me in matters of holy 
faith. It may be that I, during so long a course 
of time, may have erred and strayed from the 
Church in other matters than those I have exposed, 
and that I may be ensnared in other censures, but, 
though I have reflected much upon it, I have dis- 
covered nothing ; and I now promptly confess my 
errors, and am here in the hands of your Excel- 
lencies to receive remedy, for my salvation. My 
force does not suffice to tell how great is my re- 
pentance for my misdeeds, nor to express it as I 
should wish." Having knelt down, he said : "I 
humbly ask pardon of God and your Excellencies 
for all the errors committed by me; and I am 
ready to suffer whatsoever by your prudence shall 
be determined and adjudged expedient for my 
soul. And I further supplicate that you rather 
give me a punishment which is excessive in grav- 
ity than make such a public demonstration as 
might bring some dishonor upon the holy habit of 
the order which I have worn ; and if, through the 
mercy of God and of your Excellencies, my life 
shall be granted to me, I promise to make a nota- 
ble reform in my life, and that I will atone for the 
scandal by pther and as great edification." 



GIORDANO BEUNO 287 

Inquisitor. " Have you anything else to say for 
the present ? " 

Bruno. " I have nothing more to say." 

ii 

This is the confession and apology of Giordano 
Bruno, taken from the minutes of the Inquisition 
of Venice, so far as I have been able to interpret 
the ungrammatical, ill-punctuated report of the 
secretary. The examinations were held on May 
26 and 30, June 2, 3, 4, and July 30, 1592 ; and 
as there were, consequently, many repetitions of 
statement, I have condensed where it seemed ad- 
visable. From Bruno's lips we hear the explana- 
tion of his philosophical system, his doubts, his 
belief, and his recantation of any opinions which 
clashed with the dogmas of Catholicism. Was his 
recantation sincere ? Before answering this ques- 
tion, let us glance at his opinions as he expressed 
them freely in his works ; for upon Bruno's value 
as a thinker must finally rest the justification of 
our interest in him. True, the romance of his 
strange vagabond career and the pathos of his no- 
ble death will always excite interest in his person- 
ality ; but the final question which mankind asks 
of prophet, philosopher, poet, preacher, or man of 
science is, " What can you tell us concerning our 
origin and our destiny ? " 



288 PORTRAITS 

Be warned at the outset that Bruno furnished 
no complete, systematic reply to this question. 
He did not, like Spinoza, reduce his system to the 
precision of a geometrical text-book, all theorems 
and corollaries ; nor, like Herbert Spencer, did 
he stow the universe away in a cabinet of pigeon- 
holes. He is often inconsistent, often contradicts 
himself. Perhaps his chief merit is that he stimu- 
lated thought on every subject he touched, and 
that he made sublime guesses which experiment, 
toiling patiently after him, has established as 
truths. Like all searchers for truth, his purpose 
was to discover the all-embracing Unity. Our 
reason shows us an unbridgeable chasm between 
matter and mind ; the world of ideas and the 
outward world are in perpetual flux; nature is 
composed of innumerable separate objects, yet a 
superior unity pervades them. Life and death 
subsist antagonistically side by side : what is that, 
greater than both, which includes both ? What is 
the permanence underlying this shifting, evanes- 
cent world ? Conscience likewise reports the con- 
flict between good and evil : what is the cause an- 
terior to both ? Many solutions have been offered ; 
perhaps the commonest is that which, taught by 
the Manicheans and adopted by early Christians, 
announces that there are two principles in the 
universe, — one good, God, the other evil, Satan. 



GIORDANO BRUNO 289 

But insuperable difficulties accompany this view. 
If God be, as assumed, all-powerful, why does he 
not exterminate Satan ; if he be just, why does 
he permit evil to exist at all ? 

Bruno, as we have seen in his deposition, pro- 
claims that God is one and indivisible, the Soul 
of the universe; that his attributes are power, 
wisdom, and love; that he is in all things, yet 
above all things, not to be understood, ineffable, 
and whether personal or impersonal, man cannot 
say; that Nature is his footprint, God being the 
nature of Nature ; that since every material atom 
is part of him, by virtue of his immanence in Na- 
ture, • it is eternal, and so are human souls immor- 
tal, being emanations from his immortal spirit ; but 
whether souls preserve their identity, or whether, 
like the atoms, they are forever re-composed into 
new forms, Bruno does not decide. This, speak- 
ing broadly, is pantheism ; and pantheism is a 
system from which we are taught to recoil with 
almost as much horror as from atheism. " That 
is mere pantheism ! " exclaimed John Sterling, 
aghast, at one of Carlyle's conclusions. " And 
suppose it were^>o£-theism ? If the thing is true ! " 
replied Carlyle, — a reply not to be taken for valid 
argument, perhaps, yet worthy of being pondered. 
As a pantheist, then, we must classify Bruno, — 
in that wide class which includes Spinoza, Goethe, 



290 PORTRAITS 

Shelley, and Emerson. " Within man is the soul 
of the whole," says Emerson ; " the wise silence, 
the universal beauty, to which every part and 
particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And 
this deep power in which we exist, and whose 
beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self- 
sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of 
seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spec- 
tacle, the subject and the object, are one." The 
Inquisition in 1600 would have burned Emerson 
for those two sentences. 

Coming to details, we find that Bruno shakes 
himself free from the tyranny of Aristotle, — 
a mighty audacity, to measure which we must 
remember that upon Aristotle's arbitrary dicta 
the fathers and doctors of the Catholic Church 
had based their dogmas. Though a pagan, he had 
been for fifteen hundred years the logical pillar of 
Christendom, uncanonized, yet deserving canoni- 
zation along with St. Thomas and St. Augustine. 
Bruno dared to attack the mighty despot in his 
very strongholds, the Sorbonne and Oxford, and, by 
so doing, helped to clear the road for subsequent 
explorers of philosophy and science. Equally 
courageous was his championship of the discoveries 
and theories of Copernicus. Bruno, we may safely 
say, was the first man who realized the full mean- 
ing of the Copernican system, — a meaning which 



GIOKDANO BRUNO 291 

even to-day the majority have not grasped. He 
saw that it was not merely a question as to whether 
the earth moves round the sun, or the sun moves 
round the earth ; but that when Copernicus traced 
the courses of our solar system, and saw other 
and yet other systems beyond, he invalidated the 
strong presumption upon which dogmatic Chris- 
tianity was reared. According to the old view, the 
earth was the centre of the universe, the especial 
gem of God's creation; as a final mark of his 
favor, God created man to rule the earth, and 
from among men he designated a few — his " chosen 
people " — who should enjoy everlasting bliss in 
heaven. But it follows from Copernicus 's discov- 
eries, that the earth is but one of a company of 
satellites which circle round the sun ; that the 
sun itself is but one of innumerable other suns, 
each with its satellites; that there are probably 
countless inhabited orbs ; that the scheme of sal- 
vation taught by the old theology is inadequate to 
the new conceptions we are bound to form of the 
majesty, justice, and omnipotence of the Supreme 
Ruler of an infinite universe. The God whom 
Bruno apprehended was not one who narrowed his 
interests to the concerns of a Syrian tribe, and of 
a sect of Christians on this little ball of earth, but 
one whose power is commensurate with infinitude, 
and who cherishes all creatures and all things in 



292 PORTRAITS 

all worlds. Copernicus himself did not foresee 
the full significance of the discovery which de- 
throned the earth and man from their supposed 
preeminence in the universe; but Bruno caught 
its mighty import, and the labors of Kepler, Gali- 
leo, Newton, Herschel, and Darwin have corrobo- 
rated him. 

Inspired by this revelation, Bruno was the first 
to envisage religions as human growths, just as 
laws and customs are human growths, expressing 
the higher or lower needs and aspirations of the 
people and age in which they exist. His famous 
satire, The Expulsion of the Beast Triumphant} 
has a far deeper purpose than to travesty classic 
mythology, or to ridicule the abuses of Komanists 
and Protestants, or to scoff at the exaggerated 
pretensions of the Pope. Under the form of an 
allegory, it is a prophecy of the ultimate passing 
away of all anthropomorphic religion. It shows 
how the god whom men have worshiped hitherto 
has been endowed by them with human passions 
and attributes, " writ large," to be sure, but still 

1 This, the most famous of Bruno's works, was until recently 
so rare that only two or three copies of it were known to exist. 
Hence numerous blunders and misconceptions by critics who wrote 
about it from hearsay. For a detailed analysis of " The Beast 
Triumphant" I may refer the reader to The New World for 
September, 1894. Lucian's satire, " Zeus in Heroics," may have 
given the hint to Bruno. 



GIORDANO BRUNO 293 

unworthy of being associated with that Soul of 
the World which is in all things, yet above all 
things. Everywhere he assails the doctrine that 
faith, without good works, can lead to salvation. 
He denounces celibacy, and other unnatural rules 
of the Catholic Church. He denounces still more 
vigorously the monstrous theory of original sin, 
according to which an assumedly just God pun- 
ishes myriads of millions of human beings for the 
alleged trespass of two of their ancestors. Bruno 
also cites the discovery of new races in America 
as evidence that mankind are not all descended 
from Adam and Eve ; whence he infers that, since 
the Mosaic cosmogony is too narrow to explain 
the creation and growth of mankind, the Hebrew 
scheme of vicarious punishment and vicarious re- 
demption must be inadequate. He laughs at the 
idea of a "chosen people." Over and over again 
Bruno derides the assertion that, in order to be 
saved, we must despise our divinest guide, Reason, 
and be led blindly by Faith, reducing ourselves 
so far as we can to the level of donkeys. His 
satire, La Cabala del Cavallo Pegaseo, which 
supplements The Beast Triumphant, is a mock 
eulogy of this " holy asininity, holy ignorance, holy 
stupidity, and pious devotion, which alone can make 
souls so good that human genius and study cannot 
surpass them." " What avails, O truth-seeker," 



294 PORTRAITS 

he exclaims in one of his finest sonnets, "your 
studying and wishing to know how Nature works, 
and whether the stars also are earth, fire, and sea? 
Holy donkeydom cares not for that, but with 
clasped hands wills to remain on its knees, await- 
ing from God its doom." 

In a striking passage, Bruno explains that evil 
is relative. " Nothing is absolutely bad," he says ; 
" because the viper is not deadly and poisonous to 
the viper, nor the lion to the lion, nor dragon to 
dragon, nor bear to bear ; but each thing is bad in 
respect to some other, just as you, virtuous gods, 
are evil towards the vicious." Again he says, 
" Nobody is to-day the same as yesterday." The 
immanence of the universal soul in the animal 
world he illustrated thus : " With what under- 
standing the ant gnaws her grain of wheat, lest 
it should sprout in her underground habitation! 
The fool says this is instinct, but we say it is a 
species of understanding." 

These are some of Bruno's characteristic opin- 
ions. Their influence upon subsequent philoso- 
phers has been much discussed. His conception 
of the universe as an " animal " corresponds with 
Kepler's well-known view. Spinoza, the great pan- 
theist of the following century, took from him the 
idea of an immanent God, and the distinction 
between natura naturans and natura naturata. 



GIORDANO BRUNO 295 

Schelling, who acknowledged Bruno as his master, 
found in him the principle of the indifference of 
contraries ; Hegel, that of the absolute identity 
of subject and object, of the real and the ideal, 
of thought and things. La Croze discovers in 
Bruno the germs of most of Leibnitz's theories, 
beginning with the monad. Symonds declares that 
"he anticipated Descartes's position of the iden- 
tity of mind and being. The modern theory of 
evolution was enunciated by him in pretty plain 
terms. He had grasped the physical law of the 
conservation of energy. He solved the problem 
of evil by defining it to be a relative condition of 
imperfect energy. . . . We have indeed reason 
to marvel how many of Bruno's intuitions have 
formed the stuff of later, more elaborated systems, 
and still remain the best which these contain. We 
have reason to wonder how many of his divina- 
tions have worked themselves into the common 
fund of modern beliefs, and have become philo- 
sophical truisms." 1 Hallam,who strangely under- 
valued Bruno, states that he understood the prin- 
ciple of compound forces. After making due 
allowance for the common tendency to read back 
into men's opinions interpretations they never 
dreamed of, we shall find that much solid sub- 

1 From J. A. Symonds' s Renaissance in Italy: The Catholic 
Reaction, chap. ix. 



296 PORTRAITS 

stance still remains to Bruno's credit. He is, 
above all, suggestive. 

ni 

We come now to that perplexing question, 
" Why did he recant ? How could he, who was 
so evidently a freethinker and a rationalist, hon- 
estly affirm his belief in the Roman Catholic dog- 
mas?" His confession seems to be straightfor- 
ward and candid : had he wished to propitiate the 
Inquisitors, he needed only not to mention his 
philosophical doubts about the Incarnation and 
the Trinity ; he needed only to admit that there 
were in his writings errors which he no longer ap- 
proved, and to throw himself on the mercy of his 
tribunal. What, then, was the motive ? Was it 
physical fear? Did life and liberty seem too tempt- 
ing to him who loved both so intensely; prefer- 
able to death, no matter how great the sacrifice of 
honor ? Did he simply perjure himself ? Or was 
he suddenly overcome by a doubt that his opinions 
might be, after all, wrong, and that the Church 
might be right ? He testified, and others testified, 
that before he had any thought of being brought 
to trial he had determined to make his peace with 
the Pope, and to obtain leave, if he could, to pass 
the remainder of his life in philosophical tranquil- 
lity. Did the early religious associations and preju- 
dices, which he supposed had long ago ceased to 



GIORDANO BRUNO 297 

influence him, unexpectedly spring up, to reassert 
a temporary tyranny over his reason ? Many men 
not in jeopardy of their lives have had this expe- 
rience of the tenacious vitality of the doctrines 
taught to them before they could reason. Did 
it seem to him a huge Aristophanic joke that a 
church which then had but little real faith and 
less true religion in it should call any one to ac- 
count for any opinions, and that therefore the lips 
might well enough accept her dogmas without 
binding the heart to them? Many men, who be- 
lieved themselves sincere, have subscribed «in a 
" non-natural sense " to the Thirty-nine Articles of 
Anglicanism ; did Bruno subscribe to the Catholic 
Articles under a similar mental reservation ? Or, 
believing, as he did, that every religion contains 
fragments of the truth, could he not honestly say 
he believed in Catholicism, at the same time hold- 
ing that her symbols had a deeper significance 
than her theologians perceived, and that the truth 
he apprehended was immeasurably wider? — just 
as a mathematician might subscribe to the multi- 
plication table, knowing that it is not the final 
bound of mathematical truth, but only the first 
step towards higher and unlimited investigations. 

Throughout his examination Bruno was careful 
to make the distinction between the province of 
faith and the province of speculation. " Speaking 
after the manner of philosophy," he confessed that 



298 PORTRAITS 

he had reached conclusions which, " speaking as a 
Catholic," he ought not to believe. This distinc- 
tion, which we now think uncandid and casuisti- 
cal, was nevertheless admitted in his time. All 
through that century, men had argued "philoso- 
phically " about the immortality of the soul ; but 
" theologically " such an argument was impossible, 
because the Church pronounced the immortality of 
the soul to be an indisputable fact. But, we ask, 
can a man honestly hold two antagonistic, mutu- 
ally destroying beliefs ; saying, for instance, that 
his reason has disproved the Incarnation, but that 
his faith accepts that doctrine ? Or was Bruno 
unaware of his contradictions ? Of how many of 
your opinions concerning the ultimate mysteries of 
life do you, reader, feel so sure that, were you sud- 
denly seized, imprisoned, brought face to face with 
a pitiless tribunal, and confronted by torture and 
burning, you — one man against the world — 
would boldly, without hesitation, publish and main- 
tain them? Galileo, one of mankind's noblest, 
could not endure this ordeal, although the evi- 
dence of his senses and the testimony of his rea- 
son contradicted the denial which pain and dread 
wrung from him. Savonarola, another great spirit, 
flinched likewise. These are points we are bound 
to consider before we pronounce Bruno a hypo- 
crite or a coward. 



GIORDANO BRUNO 299 

The last news we have of him in Venice is 
when, " having been bidden several times," he rose 
from his knees, after confessing his penitence, on 
that 30th of July, 1592. The authorities of the 
Inquisition at Rome immediately opened negotia- 
tions for his extradition. The Doge and Senate 
demurred ; they hesitated before establishing the 
precedent whereby Rome could reach over and 
punish Venetian culprits. Time was, indeed, when 
Venice allowed no one, though he were the Pope, 
to meddle in her administration ; but, alas ! the 
lion had died out in Venetian souls. Finally, 
" wishing to give satisfaction to his Holiness," 
Doge and Senators consented to deliver Bruno up ; 
the Pope expressed his gratification, and said that 
he would never force upon the Republic " bones 
hard to gnaw." So Bruno was taken to Rome. 
In the " list of the prisoners of the Holy Office, 
made Monday, April 5, 1599," we find that he 
was imprisoned on February 27, 1593. What hap- 
pened during almost seven years we can only sur- 
mise. We may be sure the Inquisitors searched 
his books for further heretical doctrine. We hear 
that they visited him in his cell from time to time, 
and exhorted him to recant, but that he replied 
that he had nothing to abjure, and that they had 
misinterpreted him. A memorial which he ad- 



300 PORTRAITS 

dressed to them they did not read. Growing weary 
of their efforts to save his soul, they would tempo- 
rize no more ; on a given day he must retract, or 
be handed over to the secular arm. That day 
came: Giordano Bruno stood firm, though he knew 
the penalty was death. 

We cannot tell when he first resolved to dare 
and suffer all. Some time during those seven 
years of solitude and torment, he awoke to the 
great fact that 

" 'T is man's perdition to be safe, 
When for the truth he onght to die." 

Mere existence he could purchase with the base 
coin of cowardice or casuistry ; but that would be, 
not life, but a living shame, and he refused. Who 
can tell how hard instinct pleaded, — how the 
thoughts of freedom, how the longings for com- 
panions, how the recollections of that beautiful 
Neapolitan home which he loved .and wished to 
revisit, how the desire to explore yet more freely 
the beauties and the mysteries of the divine uni- 
verse, came to him with reasons and excuses to 
tempt him from his resolution? But conscience 
supported him. He took Truth by the hand, 
turned his back on the world and its joy and sun- 
shine, and followed whither she led into the silent, 
sunless unknown. Let us dismiss the theory that 



GIORDANO BRUNO 301 

he was impelled by the desire to escape in this 
way from an imprisonment which threatened to 
be perpetual ; let us dismiss, and contemptuously 
dismiss, the insinuation of an English writer, that 
Bruno's purpose was, by a theatrical death, to 
startle the world which had begun to forget him 
in his confinement. To impute a low motive to a 
noble deed is surely as base as to extenuate a 
crime. Bruno had no sentimental respect for mar- 
tyrs ; but on the day when he resolved to die for 
his convictions, he proved his kinship with the 
noblest martyrs and heroes of the race. 

On February 8, 1600, he was brought before 
Cardinal Mandruzzi, the Supreme Inquisitor. He 
was formally degraded from his order, sentence of 
death was pronounced against him, and he was 
given up to the secular authorities. During the 
reading, he remained tranquil, thoughtful. When 
the Inquisitor ceased, he uttered those memorable 
words, which still, judging from the recent alarm 
in the Vatican, resound ominously in the ears of 
the Romish hierarchy : " Peradventure you pro- 
nounce this sentence against me with greater fear 
than I receive it." After nine days had been 
allowed for his recantation, he was led forth, on 
February 17, to the Campo di Fiora, — once an 
amphitheatre, built by Pompey, and now a vege- 
table market. When he had been bound to the 



302 PORTRAITS 

stake, lie protested, according to one witness, that 
he died willingly, and that his soul would mount 
with the smoke into paradise. Another account 
says that he was gagged, to prevent his uttering 
blasphemies. As the flames leaped up, a crucifix 
was held before him, but he turned his head away. 
He uttered no scream, nor sigh, nor murmur, as 
Hus and Servetus had done ; even that last mortal 
agony of the flesh could not overcome his spirit. 
And when nothing remained of his body but 
ashes, these were gathered up and tossed to the 
winds. 

Berti, to whose indefatigable and enlightened 
researches, extending over forty years, we owe our 
knowledge of Bruno's career, 1 says justly that 
Bruno bequeathed to his countrymen the example 
of an Italian dying for an ideal, — a rare example 
in the sixteenth century, but emulated by thou- 
sands of Italians in the nineteenth. To us and to 
all men his death brings not only that lesson, but 
it also teaches that no tribunal, whether religious 
or political, has a right to coerce the conscience 
and inmost thoughts of any human being. Let a 
man's deeds, so far as they affect the community, 
be amenable to its laws, but his opinions should 

1 See Berti's work, Giordano Bruno da Nola ; Sua Vita e Sua 
Dottrina, 1889. This excellent biography deserves to be trans- 
lated into English. 



GIORDANO BRUNO 303 

be free and inviolable. We can grant that the 
Torquemadas and Calvins and Loyolas were sin- 
cere, and that, from their point of view, they were 
justified in persecuting men who differed from 
them in religion; for the heretic, they believed, 
was Satan's emissary, and deserved no more mercy 
than a fever-infected rag ; but history admonishes 
us that their point of view was not only cruel, but 
wrong. No man, no church, is infallible: there- 
fore it may turn out that the opinions which the 
orthodoxy of yesterday deemed pernicious have 
infused new blood into the orthodoxy of to-day. 
Bruno declared that the universe is infinite and 
its worlds are innumerable; the Eoman Inquisi- 
tion, in its ignorance, knew better. Galileo de- 
clared that the earth moves round the sun; the 
Inquisition, in its ignorance, said, No. It burned 
Bruno, it harried Galileo ; yet, after three centu- 
ries, which do we believe ? And if the Eoman 
Church was fallible in matters susceptible of easy 
proof, shall we believe that it, or any other church, 
is infallible in matters immeasurably deeper and 
beyond the scope of finite demonstration ? Cardi- 
nal Bellarmine, an upright man, and perhaps the 
ablest Jesuit of any age, was the foremost Inquisi- 
tor in bringing Bruno to the stake, and in men- 
acing Galileo with the rack ; but should a schoolboy 
of ten now uphold Bellarmine's theory of the solar 



304 PORTRAITS 

system, he would be sent into the corner with a 
fool's-cap on his head. 

Strange is it that mankind, who have the most 
urgent need for truth, should have been in all 
ages so hostile to receiving it. Starving men do 
not kill their rescuers who bring them bread; 
whereas history is little more than the chronicle 
of the persecution and slaughter of those who have 
brought food for the soul. Doubtless the first 
savage who suggested that reindeer-meat would 
taste better cooked than raw was slain by his com- 
panions as a dangerous innovator. Ever since that 
time, the messengers of truth have been stoned, and 
burned, and ganched, and crucified ; yet their mes- 
sage has been delivered, and has at last prevailed. 
This is, indeed, the best encouragement we derive 
from history, and the fairest presage of the per- 
fectibility of mankind. 

The study of the works of Giordano Bruno, 
which has been revived and extended during this 
century, is one evidence of a more general tolera- 
tion, and of a healthy desire to know the opinions 
of all kinds of thinkers. One reason why Bruno 
has attracted modern investigators is because so 
many of his doctrines are in tune with recent 
metaphysical and scientific theories ; and it seems 
probable that, for a while at least, the interest 
awakened in him will increase rather than dimin- 



GIORDANO BRUNO 305 

ish, until, after the republication and examination 
of all his writings, a just estimate of his specula- 
tions shall have been made. Much will undoubt- 
edly have to be thrown out as obsolete or fanciful ; 
much as flippant and inconsistent ; much as vitiated 
by the cumbrous methods of scholasticism, and the 
tedious fashion of expounding philosophy by means 
of allegory and satire. But, after all the chaff has 
been sifted and all the excrescences have been 
lopped off, something precious will remain. 

The very diversity of opinions about the upshot 
and value of his teaching insures for him the at- 
tention of scholars for some time to come. Those 
thinkers who can be quickly classified and easily 
understood are as quickly forgotten ; only those 
who elude classification, and constantly surprise 
us by turning a new facet towards us, and provoke 
debate, are sure of a longer consideration. And 
see how conflicting are the verdicts passed upon 
Bruno. Sir Philip Sidney and that fine group 
of men who just preceded the Shakespearean com- 
pany were his friends, and listened eagerly to his 
speculations. Hegel says : " His inconstancy has 
no other motive than his great-hearted enthusiasm. 
The vulgar, the little, the finite, satisfied him not ; 
he soared to the sublime idea of the Universal 
Substance." The French philosophes of the eigh- 
teenth century debated whether he were an athe- 



306 PORTRAITS 

ist ; the critics of the nineteenth century declare 
him to be a pantheist. Hallam thought that, at 
the most, he was but a " meteor of philosophy." 
Berti ranks him above all the Italian philosophers 
of his epoch, and above all who have since lived in 
Italy except Rosmini, and perhaps Gioberti. Some 
have called him a charlatan; some, a prophet. 
Finally, Leo XIII, in an allocution which was read 
from every Romish pulpit in Christendom, asserted 
that " his writings prove him an adept in panthe- 
ism and in shameful materialism, imbued with 
coarse errors, and often inconsistent with him- 
self ; " and that " his talents were to feign, to lie, 
to be devoted wholly to himself, not to bear con- 
tradiction, to be of a base mind and wicked heart." 
As we read these sentences of Leo XIII, and his 
further denunciation of those who, like Bruno, ally 
themselves to the Devil by using their reason, we 
reflect that, were popes as powerful now as they 
were three centuries ago, they would have found 
reason enough to burn Mill and Darwin, and many 
another modern benefactor. 

Bruno's character, like his philosophy, offers so 
many points for dispute that it cannot soon cease 
to interest men. He is so human — neither demi- 
god nor demon, but a creature of perplexities and 
contradictions — that he is far more fascinating 
than those men of a single faculty, those mono- 



GIORDANO BRUNO 307 

tones whom we soon estimate and tire of. His 
vitality, his daring, his surprises, stimulate us. In 
an age when the growing bulk of rationalism casts 
a pessimistic shadow over so many hopes, it is en- 
couraging to know that the rationalist Bruno saw 
no reason for despair ; and when some persons are 
seriously asking whether life be worth living, it 
is inspiring to point to a man to whom the boon 
of life was so precious and its delights seemed so 
inexhaustible. At any period, when many minds, 
after exploring all the avenues of science, report 
that they perceive only dead matter everywhere, it 
must help some of them to learn that Bruno be- 
held throughout the whole creation and in every 
creature the presence of an infinite Unity, of a 
Soul of the World, whose attributes are power, 
wisdom, and love. He was indeed " a God-intox- 
icated man." Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Aquinas 
spun their cobwebs round the border of the nar- 
row circle in which, they asserted, all truth, mun- 
dane and celestial, was comprehended ; Bruno's 
restless spirit broke through the cobwebs, and dis- 
covered limitless spaces, innumerable worlds, be- 
yond. To his enraptured eyes, all things were 
parts of the One, the Ineffable. "The Inquisi- 
tion and the stake," says Mr. Symonds, " put an 
end abruptly to his dream. But the dream was 
so golden, so divine, that it was worth the pangs 



308 PORTRAITS 

of martyrdom. Can we say the same for Hegel's 
system, or for Schopenhauer's, or for the encyclo- 
paedic ingenuity of Herbert Spencer?" By his 
death Bruno did not prove that his convictions 
are true, but he proved beyond peradventure that 
he was a true man ; and by such from the begin- 
ning has human nature been raised towards that 
ideal nature which we believe divine. 



BRYANT 

There are many good reasons why we should 
celebrate the one hundredth birthday of William 
Cullen Bryant. 1 Not the least of them is this, 
that in bringing him our tribute we also commem- 
orate the birthday of American poetry. He was 
our earliest poet, and " Thanatopsis " our earliest 
poem. Through him, therefore, we make festival 
to the Muse who has taught many since him to 
sing. 

Older than Bryant were three single-poem men, 
— Francis Scott Key, Joseph Hopkinson, and 
John Howard Payne ; yet, so far as I can learn, 
their three poems were written later than " Thana- 
topsis," and, after all, neither " The Star Spangled 
Banner," nor "Hail Columbia," nor "Home, 
Sweet Home," would rank high as poetry. Like- 
wise, though Fitz-Greene Halleck was older than 
Bryant by four years, and once enjoyed a consid- 
erable vogue, his verse is now obsolescent, if not 
obsolete. In the anthologies — those presses of 
faded poetical flowers — you will still find some 

1 First printed in The Review of Reviews, New York, October, 
1894. 



310 PORTEAITS 

of his pieces ; but which of us now regards " Marco 
Bozzaris " as the " finest martial poem in the lan- 
guage " ? 

Bryant's priority among his immediate contem- 
poraries is thus clearly established; furthermore, 
a considerable interval separated him from that 
group of American poets who rose to eminence in 
the two decades before the civil war. Bryant 
was born in 1794, Emerson in 1803, Longfellow 
and Whittier in 1807, Holmes and Poe in 1809, 
Lowell and Whitman in 1819. An almost un- 
exampled precocity also set Bryant's pioneership 
beyond dispute. 

But when we call Bryant the earliest American 
poet, and " Thanatopsis " the earliest American 
poem, we must not suppose that both had not had 
many ineffectual predecessors. Versifiers, like 
milliners, flourish from age to age, and their works 
are forgotten in favor of a later fashion. Who 
the forgotten predecessors of Bryant were, he him- 
self will tell us. Being asked in February, 1818, 
to write an article on American poetry for the 
North American Review he replied : — 

" Most of the American poets of much note, I 
believe, I have read, — Dwight, Barlow, Trumbull, 
Humphreys, Honeywopd, Clifton, Paine. The 
works of Hopkins I have never met with. I have 
seen Philip Freneau's writings, and some things by 



BRYANT 311 

Francis Hopkinson. There was a Dr. Ladd, if I 
am not mistaken in the name, of Rhode Island, 
who, it seems, was much celebrated in his time for 
his poetical talent, of whom I have seen hardly 
anything ; and another, Dr. Church, a Tory at the 
beginning of the Revolution, who was compelled 
to leave the country, and some of whose satirical 
verses which I have heard recited possess consid- 
erable merit as specimens of forcible and glowing 
invective. I have read most of Mrs. Morton's 
poems, and turned over a volume of stale and 
senseless rhymes by Mrs. Warren. Before the 
time of these writers, some of whom are still alive, 
and the rest belong to the generation which has 
just passed away, I imagine that we could hardly 
be said to have any poetry of our own ; and indeed 
it seems to me that American poetry, such as it 
is, may justly enough be said to have had its rise 
with that knot of Connecticut poets, Trumbull 
and others, most of whose works appeared about 
the time of the Revolution." 1 

Bryant's list contains the name of not one poet 
whose works are read to-day. All these volumes 
belong to fossil literature, — literature, that is, 
which may be dug up and studied for the light it 
may throw on the customs of a time, or its intel- 

1 A Biography of William Cullen Bryant, by Parke Godwin, 
i, 154. 



312 PORTRAITS 

lectual development, but which, so far as its own 
vitality is concerned, has passed away beyond hope 
of resuscitation. The historical student of Amer- 
ican poetry may read Barlow's " Columbiad " as a 
matter of duty ; but those of us to whom poetry is 
the breath of life will not seek it in that literary 
graveyard. Eeverently, rather, will we read the 
titles on the tombstones and pass on. 

Almost coeval with American independence it- 
self was the notion that there ought to be an in- 
dependent American literature. The Revolution 
had resulted in the formation of a republic new 
in pattern, in opportunities, in ideals ; a republic 
which, having broken forever with the political 
system of Britain, would gladly have been freed 
from all obligations — including intellectual and 
sesthetic obligations — to her. We hardly realize 
how acute was the sensitiveness of our great- 
grandfathers on this point. The satisfaction they 
took in recalling the victories of Bennington and 
Yorktown vanished when they were reminded — 
and there was always some candid foreigner at 
hand to remind them — that a nation's real great- 
ness is measured, not by the size of its crops, nor 
by its millions of square miles of surface, nor by 
the rapidity with which its population doubles, 
nor even by its ability to whip King George the 
Third's armies, but by its contributions to philo- 



BRYANT 313 

sophy, to literature, to art, to religion. " What 
have you to show in these lines ? " we imagine the 
candid foreigner to have been perpetually asking ; 
and the patriotic American to have winced, as he 
had to reply, " Nothing ; " unless, indeed, he hap- 
pened to have Thomas Jefferson's philosophical 
poise. To the slur of Abbe Eaynal, that " Amer- 
ica had not produced a single man of genius," 
Jefferson replied: "When we shall have existed 
as a people as long as the Greeks did before they 
produced a Homer, the Romans a Yirgil, the French 
a Racine and Yoltaire, the English a Shakespeare 
and Milton, should this reproach be still true, we 
will inquire from what unfriendly causes it has 
proceeded that the other countries of Europe and 
other quarters of the earth shall not have inscribed 
any name of ours on the roll of poets." 

Very few Americans, however, could bear with 
Jeffersonian equanimity the imputation of inferi- 
ority. All were well aware that they had just 
achieved a revolution without parallel in history ; 
they were honestly proud of it ; and they could not 
help feeling touchy when their critics, ignoring 
this stupendous achievement, censured them for 
failure in fields they had never entered. A few, 
like Jefferson, would respond, " Give us time ; " 
the majority either masked their irritation under 
pretended contempt for the opinion of foreigners, 



314 PORTRAITS 

or silently admitted the impeachment. There 
grew up, on the one hand, " spread-eagleism," — 
brag over our material and political bigness, — and, 
on the other, an impatient desire to produce mas- 
terpieces which should not fear comparison with 
the best the world could show. The Hebrew pa- 
triarchs, whose faith Jehovah tested by denying 
them children till the old age of their wives, were 
not less troubled at the postponement of their 
dearest wishes than were those eager watchers for 
the advent of American genius. Long before 
Bryant's little volume was published, in 1821, 
those watchers had begun to speculate as to the 
sort of work in which that genius would mani- 
fest itself, and then was conjured up that bogy, 
" The American Spirit," which has flitted up and 
down through our college lecture-rooms and flut- 
tered the minds of immature critics ever since. It 
was generally agreed that the question to be asked 
about each new book should be, " Has it The Amer- 
ican Spirit ? " and not, " Is it excellent ? " No- 
body knew how to define that spirit, but everybody 
had a teasing conviction that, unless it were con- 
spicuous, the offspring of American genius could 
not prove their legitimacy. Foreigners, especially 
the English, encouraged this conviction. They ex- 
pected something strange and uncouth ; they would 
accept nothing else as genuine. Hence, years after- 



BRYANT 315 

ward, when Whitman, with cowboy gait, came 
swaggering up Parnassus, shouting nicknames 
at the Muses and ready to slap Apollo on the 
back, our perspicacious English cousins exclaimed, 
" There ! there ! that 's American ! At last we 've 
found a poet with The American Spirit ! " For 
quite other reasons Whitman deserves serious at- 
tention ; not for those extravagances which he 
deluded himself and his unrestrained admirers into 
thinking were most precious manifestations of The 
American Spirit. This bogy has now been pretty 
thoroughly exorcised, its followers being chiefly 
the writers of bad grammar, bad spelling, and 
slang, — which pass for dialect stories, — and an 
occasional student of literature, who finds very lit- 
tle of the American product that could not have 
been produced elsewhere. We may dismiss The 
American Spirit, bidding it seek its spectral com- 
panion, The Great American Novel, but we must 
remember that, even before Bryant began to write, 
it was worrying the minds of our literary folk. • 

Bryant himself must have been subjected, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, to the influences we have 
surveyed, — for who can escape breathing the com- 
mon atmosphere ? But he had within him that 
which is more potent than any external mould, 
and is the one trait hereditary in genius of every 
kind, — he had sincerity. What he saw, he saw 



316 PORTRAITS 

with his own eyes ; what he spake, he spake with 
his own lips; and inevitably it followed that men 
proclaimed him original. His secret, his method, 
were no more than this. " I saw some lines by 
you to the skylark," he writes to his brother in 
1838. " Did you ever see such a bird ? Let me 
counsel you to draw your images, in describing 
Nature, from what you observe around you, unless 
you are professedly composing a description of 
some foreign country, when, of course, you will 
learn what you can from books. The skylark is 
an English bird, and an American who has never 
visited Europe has no right to be in raptures 
about it." That last sentence explains Bryant; 
it is worth a hundred essays on The American 
Spirit ; it should be the warning of every writer. 
The raptures of Americans over English skylarks 
they had never seen were then, and have always 
been, the bane of our literature. Eighty years 
ago the lowlands at the foot of our Helicon had 
been turned into a slough by the tears of rhym- 
sters who did not feel the griefs they sang of, and 
the woods howled with sighs which caused no pang 
to the sighers. Bryant, by merely being natural 
and sincere, was instantly recognized as belonging 
to that lineage every one of whose children is a 
king. 

The story of his entry into literature, though 



BRYANT 317 

well known, cannot be too often told. Born at 
Cummington, a little village on the Hampshire 
hills, Massachusetts, November 3, 1794, his father 
was a genial, fairly cultivated country doctor; 
his mother, Sarah Snell, an indefatigable house- 
wife, with Yankee common-sense and deep-grained 
Puritan principles. William Cullen, the second 
of several children, was precocious; both parents 
encouraged his aptitude for verse-making, and a 
satire which he wrote in 1807 on Jefferson and 
the Embargo his father was proud to have printed 
in Boston. In 1810 young Bryant entered the 
sophomore class of Williams College, and spent a 
year there. He hoped to pass from Williams to 
Yale, where he looked for more advanced instruc- 
tion, but his father's means did not permit, and 
the son, instead of finishing his course at Wil- 
liams, went into a country lawyer's office and fitted 
himself for the bar. Just at the moment of in- 
decision, in the autumn of 1811, Bryant wrote 
" Thanatopsis." Contrary to his custom, he did 
not show it to his father, but laid it away with 
other papers in a drawer. Six years later Dr. 
Bryant, whose duties as a member of the Massa- 
chusetts legislature took him often to Boston, and 
whose bright parts and liberal views made him 
welcome in the foremost circles there, was asked 
by his friends, who edited the North American 



318 PORTRAITS 

Review, for some contribution. On returning to 
Cummington, he happened to find his son's seques- 
tered papers, and, choosing " Thanatopsis " — of 
which, the original being covered with many cor- 
rections, he made a copy — and " The Waterfowl," 
he sent them off to Boston, and they appeared in 
the Review for September, 1817. The young poet, 
having meanwhile completed his legal studies, was 
practicing law at Great Barrington, unconscious of 
the fame about to descend upon him. Owing to 
the handwriting of the copy of the poems sent 
to the Review, however, Dr. Bryant had for a 
moment the credit of being the author of " Thana- 
topsis." 

After duly allowing for the common tendency 
to make fame retroactive, we cannot doubt that 
" Thanatopsis " secured immediate and, relatively, 
immense recognition. The best judges agreed that 
at last a bit of genuine American literature was 
before them ; the uncritical but appreciative, from 
ministers to school children, read, learned, ad- 
mired, and quoted the grave, sonorous lines. 

Thanatopsis, — a Vision of Death ! A strange 
corner-stone for the poetic literature of the nation 
which had only recently sprung into life, — a nation 
conscious as no other had been of its exuberant 
vitality, of its boundless material resources, of its 
expansiveness and invincible will. Yet neither the 



BRYANT 319 

glory achieved nor the ambition cherished fired the 
imagination of the youthful poet. He looked upon 
the earth, and saw it but a vast grave ; he looked 
upon men and beheld, not their high ambitions nor 
the great deeds which blazon human story, but 
their transcience, their mortality. Nothing in life 
could so awe him as the majestic mystery of death. 

The mood, I believe, is not rare among sensitive 
and thoughtful youths, who, just as their faculties 
have ripened sufficiently to enable them to feel 
a little of the unspeakable delight of living, are 
staggered at realizing for the first time that death 
is inevitable, and that the days of the longest life 
are few. That this terrific discovery should kindle 
thoughts full of sublimity need not surprise us ; 
but we may well be astonished that Bryant at 
seventeen should have had power to express them 
in a poem which is neither morbid nor religiously 
commonplace. 

In 1821 Bryant received what was then the blue 
ribbon of recognition in being asked to deliver a 
poem before the Harvard Chapter of the Phi Beta 
Kappa Society. He wrote " The Ages," read it 
in Cambridge and printed it, together with " Than- 
atopsis " and a few other pieces, in a little volume. 
The previous conviction was confirmed ; every one 
spoke of Bryant as the American poet. Even the 
professional critics — those sapient fellows whose 



320 PORTRAITS 

obtuseness is the wonder of posterity, the clique 
which pooh-poohed Keats, and ha-hahed Words- 
worth, and bear-baited Carlyle — made in Bryant's 
case no mistake. Although one of them, indeed, 
declared that there was " no more poetry in Bry- 
ant's poems than in the Sermon on the Mount," 
yet the opinions were generally laudatory, and the 
critics were quick in defining the qualities of the 
new poet. They found in him something of Cow- 
per and something of Wordsworth, but the resem- 
blances did not imply imitation ; Bryant might 
speak their language, but it was his also. No one 
questioned the genuineness of his inspiration, and 
not for a quarter of a century after the publica- 
tion of " Thanatopsis," that is, not until the early 
forties, — when Longfellow, Whittier, Poe, and 
Emerson began to have a public for their poetry, 
— did any one question Bryant's primacy. He had 
been so long the only American poet that it was 
naturally assumed that he would always be the 
best. He had redeemed America from the re- 
proach of barrenness in poetry, as Irving and 
Cooper redeemed its prose, and Americans could 
feel toward no others as they felt toward him. 

A hundred years have elapsed since his birth ; 
three generations have known his works : what is 
Bryant to us, who are posterity to him ? Is he, 
like Cimabue in painting, a mere name to date 



BRYANT 321 

from, — a pioneer whom we respect, — and nothing 
more ? Far from it. Bryant's poetry is not only 
chronologically but absolutely interesting : it lives 
to-day, and the qualities which have vitalized it for 
three quarters of a century show no signs of decay. 
It would be incorrect, of course, to assert that 
Bryant holds relatively so high a place in our liter- 
ature as he held fifty years ago ; his estate then 
was the first poetic clearing in the wilderness ; 
its boundaries are still the same; but subsequent 
poets have made other clearings all round his, and 
brought different prospects into view and different 
talents under cultivation. 

Let us look briefly at Bryant's domain. Inti- 
mate and faithful portrayal of Nature is the pro- 
duct which first draws our attention; next we 
perceive that the observer who makes the picture 
is a sober moralist. He delights in Nature for 
her own sake, for her beauty and variety ; and then 
she suggests to him some rule of conduct, some 
parallel between her laws and the laws of human 
life, by which he is comforted and uplifted. Bry- 
ant, I have said elsewhere, interprets Nature mor- 
ally, Emerson spiritually, and Shelley emotion- 
ally. We need not stop to inquire which of these 
methods of interpretation is the highest. Suffice 
it for us to realize that all of them are valuable, 
and that the poet who succeeds in identifying him- 



.' 



322 PORTRAITS 

self in a marked degree with any one of them will 
not soon be forgotten. 

That "Wordsworth preceded Bryant in the moral 
interpretation of Nature detracts nothing from 
Bryant's merit. The latest prophet is no less ori- 
ginal than the earliest ; for originality lies in being 
a prophet at all. Young Bryant, wandering over 
the bleak Hampshire hills or in the woods or along 
the brawling streams, had original impressions, 
which he trustingly recorded ; and to-day, if you 
go to Cummington, you will marvel at the fidelity 
of his record. But his poetry is true not only 
there ; it is true in every region where Nature 
has similar aspects ; symbolically, it is true every- 
where. 

There being no doubt as to the veracity of his 
pictures, what shall we say of that other quality, 
the moral tone which pervades them ? That, too, 
is of a kind men will not soon outgrow. It incul- 
cates courage, patience, fortitude, trust ; it springs 
from the optimism of one who believes in the ulti- 
mate triumph of good, not because he can prove 
it, but because his whole being revolts at the 
thought of evil triumphant. He has the stoic's 
dread of flinching before any shock of misfortune, 
the Christian's dread of the taint of sin. Here 
are two ideals, each the complement of the other, 
which the world cannot outgrow, and the poet who 



BRYANT 323 

— pondering on a fringed gentian or the flight of 
a waterfowl, or on a rivulet bickering among its 
grasses — found new incitements to courage and 
virtue, thereby associated himself with the eternal. 
To interpret nature morally in this fashion, which 
is Bryant's fashion, is to rise far above the level of 
the common didacticism of our pulpits. Profes- 
sional moralists go to nature for figures of speech 
to furnish forth their sermons and religious verse, 
as they go to their kitchen garden for vegetables ; 
but they do not enter Bryant's world. 

Moreover, in painting the scenery of the Hamp- 
shire hills, and in saturating his descriptions with 
the moral tonic I have spoken of, Bryant became 
the representative of a phase of New England life 
which has had an incalculable influence on the de- 
velopment of this nation. The mitigated Spartan- 
ism amid which his youth was passed bred those 
colonists who carried New England standards with 
them to the shores of the Pacific. A Puritan by 
derivation and environment, Bryant was by train- 
ing and conviction a Unitarian, — a combination 
which made him in a sense the exemplar both of 
the austerity which had characterized New Eng- 
land ideals in the past, and of the liberalism which 
during this century has nowhere found more stren- 
uous supporters than in New England. 

On many positive grounds, therefore, Bryant's 



324 PORTRAITS 

title to fame rests ; he was one of Nature's men, 
lie shed moral health, he uttered the ideals of a 
great race in a transitional epoch. His tempera- 
ment, in making his poetic product small, gave him 
yet another hostage against oblivion. The poet 
who, having so many claims to the consideration 
of posterity, can also plead brevity, need not worry 
himself about what is called literary immortality. 
Bryant's typical and best work is comprised in a 
dozen poems, the longest not exceeding 140 lines. 
Eead " Thanatopsis," "The YeUow Violet," "In- 
scription for the Entrance to a Wood," " To a 
Waterfowl," " Green River," " A Winter Piece," 
" The Rivulet," " A Forest Hymn," " The Past," 
"To a Fringed Gentian," "The Death of the 
Flowers," and " The Battlefield," and you have 
Bryant's message; the rest of his work either 
echoes the notes already sounded in these, or re- 
presents uncharacteristic, and therefore transitory, 
moods. 

Not less conspicuous than his excellences are 
Bryant's limitations. We may say of him that, 
like Wordsworth, he did not always overcome a 
tendency to emphasize the obvious, and that, like 
almost all contemplative poets, he sometimes made 
the didactic unnecessarily obtrusive. We have all 
heard parsons who, after finishing their sermon, 
sum it up in a valedictory prayer, with a hint as 



BRYANT 325 

to its application, for the benefit of the Lord; 
equally superfluous, even for mortal readers, is the 
moral too often appended to a poem which is well 
able to convey its meaning without it. In this 
respect Bryant resembles most of our American 
poets, in whom didacticism has prevailed to an 
extent that will lessen their repute with poster- 
ity; for each generation manufactures more than 
enough of this commodity for its own consumption, 
and cannot be induced to try stale moralities left 
over from the fathers. 

Bryant's self-control, the backbone of a char- 
acter of high integrity, prevented him from in- 
dulging in emotions which, if they be not the sub- 
stance of great poetry, are the color, the glow, 
which give great poetry its charm. He addresses 
the intellect; he has, if not heat, light; and he 
does not, as emotional poets sometimes do, play 
the intellect false or lead it astray. 

In his versification he is compact and stately, 
though occasionally stiff. He came at the end of 
that metrical drought which lasted from Milton's 
death to Burns, when the instinct for writing mu- 
sical iambics was lost, and, instead, men wrote in 
measured thuds, by rule. That phenomenon the 
psychologist should explain. How was it that a 
people lost, during a century and a half, its ear 
for metrical music, as if a violinist should sud- 



326 PORTRAITS 

denly prefer a tom-tom to a violin ? Probably the 
exorbitant use of hymn and psalm singing, that 
came in with the Puritans, helped to degrade 
English poetry. The spirit which expelled emo- 
tion from worship, and destroyed whatever it could 
of the beauty of England's churches, had no un- 
derstanding for metrical harmony. Any poor 
shred of morality, the tritest dogmatic platitude, if 
stretched thin, chopped into the required number 
of feet, rhymed, and packed into six or eight 
stanzas, with clumsy variations on the doxology at 
the end, made a hymn, for the edification of per- 
sons whose object was worship and not beauty. 
As a means to unction, mere doggerel, sung out of 
tune, would serve as well as anything. 

At any rate, the taste for rigid iambics would 
naturally be acquired by Bryant at. his church- 
going in childhood, and from the eighteenth cen- 
tury poets whom he read earliest. The beautiful 
variety of modulations which Coleridge, Shelley, 
Keats, and Tennyson have shown this verse — the 
historic metre of our race — to be susceptible of, 
lay beyond Bryant's range. His verse is either 
simple, almost colloquial, or dignified, as befits his 
theme ; even in ornament he is sober. As he never 
surpassed the grandeur of conception of " Thana- 
topsis," so, I think, he did not afterward equal 
the splendid metrical sweep of certain passages 
in that wonderful poem. 



BRYANT 327 

And this fact points to another : Bryant is one 
of the few poets of genuine power whose poetic 
career shows no advance. The first arrow he 
drew from his quiver was the best, and with it 
he made his longest shot ; many others he sent in 
the same direction, but they all fell behind the 
first. This accounts for the singleness and depth 
of the impression he has left ; he stands for two 
or three elementals, and thereby keeps his force 
unscattered. He was not, indeed, wholly insensi- 
ble to the romanticist stirrings of his time, as such 
effusions as " The Damsel of Peru," " The Arctic 
Lover," and " The Hunter's Serenade," bear wit- 
ness. He wrote several pieces about Indians, — 
not the real red men, but those imaginary noble 
savages, possessors of all the primitive virtues, 
with whom our grandfathers peopled the Ameri- 
can forests. He wrote strenuously in behalf of 
Greek emancipation and against slavery; but even 
here, though the subject lay very near his heart, 
he could not match the righteous vehemence of 
Whittier, or Lowell's alternate volleys of sarcasm 
and rebuke. Like Antaeus, Bryant ceased to be 
powerful when he did not tread his native earth. 

"We have thus surveyed his poetical product and 
genius, for to these first of all is due the celebra- 
tion of his centennial, and we conclude that his 
contemporaries were right and that we are right 



328 PORTRAITS 

in holding his work precious. But while it is 
through his poetry that Bryant survives, let us 
not forget the worth of his personality. For sixty 
years he was the dean of American letters. By 
his example he swept away the old foolish idea 
that unwillingness to pay bills, addiction to the 
bottle and women, and a preference for frowsy 
hair and dirty linen are necessary attributes of 
genius, especially of poetic genius. He disdained 
the proverbial backbiting and envy of authors. 
As the editor of a newspaper which for half a 
century had no superior in the country, he exer- 
cised an influence which cannot be computed. "We 
who live under the regime of journalists who con- 
ceive it to be the mission of newspapers to deposit 
at every doorstep from eight to eighty pages of 
the moral and political garbage of the world every 
morning, — we may well magnify Bryant, whose 
long editorial career bore witness that being a 
journalist should not absolve a man from the 
common obligations of moral cleanliness, of vera- 
city, of scandal-hating, of delicacy, of honor. 

Finally, Bryant was a great citizen, — that last 
product which it is the business of our education 
and our political and social life to bring forth. In 
a monarchy the soldier is the type most highly 
prized; but in a democracy, if democratic forms 
shall long endure, citizens of the Bryant pattern, 



BRYANT 329 

whose chief concern in public not less than in pri- 
vate life is to " make reason and the will of God 
prevail," must abound in constantly increasing 
numbers. Happy and grateful should we be that, 
in commemorating our earliest poet, we can discern 
no line of his which has not an upward tendency, 
no trait of his character unfit to be used in build- 
ing a noble, strong, and righteous State. 



ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED 
BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND CO. 

CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U. S. A. 



/ 






s. 



h, 



\ 






T "a '-?.'•■ A 

















C, vf 1 






° v *1^% 




* \-W-y \W/ v •- 



\/' 









VC," 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



021 102 361 2 



■ 



*.»: 



■ 



in 



^M 












II 



!«r*i 



o\ 



■>S:\M 



i ■ 



'i';, 






